Giving the Keys Back to the Folks Who Crashed the Car

[babylonsister]

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

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Giving the Keys Back to the Folks Who Crashed the Car


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.

snip//

In John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, perhaps the most memorable line was uttered by an angry farmer about to lose his home (sound familiar?). Enraged and despairing but unable to pinpoint blame for his terrible loss, he asks, "Who can we shoot?" That's what voters were asking in 2010, and most had no clearer idea than the farmer of where responsibility for their plight lay.

The 2010 election was the political equivalent of the perfect crime: The GOP vigorously took on all reforms designed to rebalance the economy for the long term, tying Washington up in contorted knots, then were rewarded at the polls by voters dissatisfied with an ugly D.C. culture unable to produce economic renewal.


Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are the authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

[SeaLyons]

1. This country is mostly made up of stupid people....that can be the only answer.

Anyone casting a republican vote is either very rich, or very stupid.

[old mark]

6. Or both - not uncommon...nt

[msongs]

2. Obama's call to be bipartisan went over bigger than he thought lol nt

[glinda]

3. Giving the keys to an auto thief.

[Spazito]

4. Excellent read...

For the voters to hand power back to the very same people who caused their misery in the first place defies explanation. It fits the very definition of insanity, imo.

[political_Dem]

5. The sad thing is that the voters who put the RW in office November 2010 will realize this too late.

This voting outcome was a referendum on punishing Mr. Obama. However, those that "wanted to teach the POTUS a lesson" will get a nasty surprise when policy that is designed to help them gets mired in Confressional gridlock.

This is the blowback that happens when you put people in office who are solely bent on revenge.