Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, HuffPo: "Giving the Keys Back to the Folks Who Crashed the Car"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Authors, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
Posted: November 3, 2010 02:11 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-s-hacker-and-paul-pierson/giving-the-keys-back-to-t_b_778419.html

After Tuesday's drubbing, Democrats will search for the hidden message of the election. But the message isn't hidden: The decisive blocs of voters that switched from Democrats in 2008 to Republicans in 2010 were angry and disillusioned -- with the economy, with a political system they see as helping banks and CEOs, not ordinary working families, and with both parties, Republicans (exit-poll favorability rating: 41 percent) as well as Democrats (43 percent). They want action to rebalance the economy so it produces jobs and gains for the middle class, not just Wall Street. Unfortunately, they're not going to get it.

That's because these voters have just handed Congress back to a party least likely to heed their call: the party that spent the last two years saying no to Wall Street reform, to an economic recovery package that included major tax cuts, to expanded health insurance and medical cost control, and to extension of the 2001 tax cuts for the middle class; the party that shamelessly courted lobbyists and corporate donors while claiming they were only against reform because it represented a "bailout" of these very same interests.

In exit polls, voters were asked who they blamed for the state of the economy. In order, they blamed banks, then the Bush administration, and only then the current administration. Yet those who blamed banks gave their votes by a wide margin to the GOP. Their votes have made Speaker-to-be John Boehner the second most powerful person in Washington only months after he staged an open rally for bank lobbyists, urging them to block Democrats and their "punk staffers." The rally worked: Wall Street swung toward the Republicans, joining health insurers, big business groups, energy companies, and the rest of the GOP's new money trust.

Midterm election losses are a virtual inevitability for the party of the president. A terrible economy makes them more certain -- and larger. The only thing that would have saved Democrats from big losses this time around was a huge organizational and fundraising edge. Thanks to the Tea Party and billions in outside campaign spending that favored the GOP, the edge was Republicans'.

[Ghost Dog]

1. Now the President can demand "action to rebalance the economy"

... knowing he won't get it?

The correct Keynsian stimulus would go not to finance but to intelligently-planned direct investment in building-out new infrastructure (creating new industries and jobs) for the resource-constrained 21st-Century future.

And outgoings should be reduced by containing the military.

[Beerball1]

2. Bullshit

This OP is bullshit. The D's didn't switch their votes to R's. They stayed home because after '08', they were told by this administration to shut up & get lost. Oh, and they didn't appreciate being called retards, either.

[INdemo]

3. It was Gibbs that called us whiners

and Obama didnt call him on it and that my friends was one reason..the other was we were suppose to have all these infrastucture jobs..That didnt happen so that was the key that kept voters away..And many of those voters were union construction workers

[andym]

4. A very good article by Hacker (who inspired the orginal public option last year) nt.