America is a sick society

[Eric the Green]

(08-02-2017, 09:00 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

Eric Wrote:There is little chance that a smart, center-left or left economic program that was actually implemented and was working-well would result in them casting votes for Democrats.

You contradict yourself here: In both 1994 and 2010, the people who voted Republican who had voted Democratic in the previous election showed no patience whatever. 
 
In both 1992 and 2008 Democrats won elections on the basis of economic issue.  They had NOT previously demonstrated their economic credibility, they won simply because voters were reacting against the prior Republican administration. And after winning control of the government what did they do economically? After 1992 it was NAFTA. After 2008 it was the stimulus.
 
I believe the stimulus was modestly successful, but such a perception is not obvious.  Democrat's own projections undermined the perceptual impact.  They issued a report that projected peak unemployment around 8%, compared to 9% without the program (see Fig 1 in ref 1)  The actual unemployment trajectory looked much like the “no stimulus” projection, which implies the stimulus did not work.  

Obama’s signature accomplishment, the ACA, was a complex program with many moving parts that was vulnerable to Republican rat-fucking.  Democrats made no effort to sell the program and they screwed up the rollout.  Recall that he 2013 rollout happened right after the Republicans had shut down the government, and were suffering the political damage from that.  Had the rollout been successful, in the wake of the Republican misstep, and then was followed the success in enrollment, the perception of the program at the beginning of the 2014 election year would have been much more positive.  Clinton had picked up seats in 1998, Obama lost the Senate in 2014 (and that cost us a SC Justice). It can be argued that the Obama administration dropped the ball on the ACA.
 

I don't tend to agree with you there. I don't think Obama dropped the ball significantly. Obamacare was starting to work, and advertising was made to help sell the program and get people enrolled. It was voted against in 2014 because the Republican "anti-socialist" propaganda was effective. I don't think the facts had much to do with how people voted.

In 1998, if the people had had any sense, they would have voted out that right-wing "shut down" Gingrich/Lewinsky congress, not merely cut back their obscene majority a little bit.

In 1994, health care was also the issue, not NAFTA. The voters threw out the Democrats just because they tried to enact their "big government" reforms to which Rush Limbaugh and his listeners disagreed, and suffered the wrath of TV ads put out by the insurance industry (what were their names?) Meanwhile Bill Clinton succeeded to some extent to enact policies that helped the middle class do better than it had done under Reagan-Bush, including the minimum wage increase that Obama failed to enact, and refundable tax credits.

Quote:

Quote:Appointing Paul Volker was necessary to stop inflation. And it worked...

What Volcker did (and subsequent Feds have done) is used interest rate policy to control inflation.  This policy works by preventing wage growth. If wages don’t rise, people stop buying stuff if the price rises, and inflation in the sort of goods and services working class people stops.  Inflation continues in the sort of stuff rich people buy (luxury goods, housing/property, education, medical care, financial assets etc.).

It DID work, wages haven’t risen significantly since and inflation in ordinary goods and services has been low.  If Democrats were willing to control inflation at the expense of their working class base, then there was no need for balanced budgets and high taxes on wealthy people that Republicans used to accept in order to get low inflation. Republicans overnight became the party of tax cuts and deficits.
 

Republicans have been against tax hikes since the 1920s and probably the 1890s. Moderates went along with high taxes in the 1950s, which the Democrats had raised in the 1940s.

Quote:

Quote:The first Obama congress did not raise the minimum wage, but it had just been raised by the Democratic congress in 2007.

Yes they had, but to a level that Democrats believe was too low.  In 2009 they had a chance to rectify that situation.  They did not.
 

1. (http://otrans.3cdn.net/ee40602f9a7d8172b8_ozm6bt5oi.pdf Figure 1).
   

I guess they failed at that. I don't remember whether a raise was even tried in 2009.