Post-election thoughts

Why the election matters:
Did Obama get a "mandate"? Probably not, but he did get a vote of confidence. Over the next few years, it is probable that the economy will begin to take off. Perhaps even very strongly. Had Romney won, the conservative program of upper-bracket tax cuts, deregulation, and austerity would have been seen as the causal factor. The Republicans would have been given much of the credit, while Obama and Keynesian economic policies would have been thoroughly discredited in the public mind.

This would have been tragic, since the Obama policies of the last four years, particularly his first two years, stabilized an economy in free-fall and laid the foundations for not only short-term recovery, but longer term growth and stability (think investments in green energy, the auto rescue, infrastructure investments, investments in education, financial sector reform). 

Now, with the Obama second term secured, the president will be in position to rightfully take much of the credit for the ensuing economic recovery. (Yes, exogenous factors, such as the Euro zone crisis, slowing growth in China, or the so-called fiscal cliff could still hamper recovery in the short-term).

With a second term secured, Obama will be in position to oversee the implementation of his major first term achievements, from Obamacare to financial sector reform. Many pundits were critical of a perceived lack of second term goals/agenda expounded by Obama during the campaign. But this fails to take account of the first term achievements that will only come to fruition in an Obama second term.

Finally, the election is a repudiation of the Republican strategy of obstruction and what I've come to call the post-truth campaign of Romney/Ryan. It is no secret that even when the Democrats held a large majority in the Senate for much of 2009-2010, the GOP, led by Mitch McConnell, embarked on a strategy of complete obstruction of the president's agenda and executive and judicial nominees. (McConnell famously remarked that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”) This was done without regard for the welfare of the country and constitutes abdication of public responsibility and statesmanship.  Secondly, it is a repudiation of what I've come to call post-truth politics. All politicians and campaigns bend the truth or cherry pick facts to bolster their case. But the Romney/Ryan campaign invented an alternative reality, one largely built solely in the conservative imagination, that is beyond anything else we've seen in American politics. This was an alternative reality of "apology tours", gutting of welfare work requirements, Jeep sending American jobs to China, among many, many others. And that's not even getting into the Romney/Ryan policy proposals, many of which don't come close to adding up (deficit reduction only after yet more enormous tax cuts; 12 million new jobs, without specific policy proposals to get us there, etc.). For the good of the nation, this strategy has failed--at least for now. 


How/why the election was won by Obama:
The economy was/is so terrible, recovery has stalled, Obama's presidency is a failure. That's what we've been told by Romney and the Republicans. Consequently, there is no way Obama could win, right? Heck, Romney didn't even have to get specific on policy, since any "generic"/vanilla Republican would easily beat out Obama, just by virtue of not being Obama. Or so we were told.

Either the recovery is indeed improving (and that improvement is starting to be felt/perceived by a large enough portion of the electorate), thus negating the stated raison d'etre of a Romney candidacy; or voters reject the conservative Republican program. Pick your poison.

I tend to think it's a bit of both. But I also think it runs deeper than that.

First, although most Americans do not fully understand the causes of the economic crisis of 2008, or the economic policy prescriptions to combat that crisis, the majority of mainstream America understands that the economy was teetering on the edge of a knife when Obama took office in 2009; that we were hemorrhaging jobs by the hundreds of thousands every month; that capital markets were virtually frozen and that a period of deleveraging was necessary; and that the enormity of the situation--one rightfully understood as unprecedented since the Great Depression--would not and could not be fixed completely within a single presidential term. A majority of voters were willing to give Obama four more years to finish the job, rather than turn back and give the keys back to the party that is still widely perceived to be responsible (at least through their policy prescriptions) for the mess in the first place.

Secondly, Americans simply don't see Obama through the same lens as conservatives. The Obama of the right-wing imagination simply doesn't exist in reality. I attribute this to the conservative echo chamber, where conservatives end up believing their own spin and talking points, no matter how outlandish. Instead, I think a solid majority of the American people see Obama as center-left, pragmatic, and thoroughly within the mainstream of American politics.

Third, it's the demographics. Obama won all demographic groups outside of white males, a group that constitutes a shrinking proportion of the electorate. He won the women vote 55-45; the youth vote 60-40; and the non-white vote 80-20 (!). Republicans have neglected the Hispanic vote to their detriment, winning 40 % (in 2004), 31 % (in 2008), and down to only 27 % in 2012. This is a changing country demographically and Republicans (and their policy agenda) have failed to adjust. This is a party that relies on a progressively smaller white demographic. 

Fourth, Obama ran the better campaign. Sure, Romney had his moments, but he made several crucial strategic mistakes, some of necessity, others out of blunder. Romney moved so far to the right during the Republican primaries that he had a long ways to travel back to the center, a move that he attempted too late in the game (roughly the first debate). Also, Romney virtually conceded the summer months, during which the Obama camp successfully defined Romney on their own terms (re: Bain) and, in so doing, poked doubt and holes in Romney's claim to be an economic turnaround wiz.

And, of course, there's Ohio. This was the most interesting battleground state for the sole reason that demographics cannot explain the Obama victory (mostly white, working class state, unlike other battleground states that have shifting demographics, such as Colorado, Nevada, and Florida). The auto rescue played a large role here; but also trust. I don't think a lot of Ohioans fundamentally trusted Romney. 

Other election thoughts:

-Revenge of the nerds: the polling was almost spot-on, both in the national popular vote, and in all contested swing states. Republicans, of course, were highly critical of these polls for much of the cycle, but the polls, in the aggregate, were vindicated. I think this is another symptom of the Republican alternative reality. In the real world, math matters. 

-Obamacare a non-factor. Only 17% in exit polling stated healthcare as a motivating factor (and I would suspect a good percentage of those were in fact in favor of the law). Also, a ballet initiative in FL to eliminate the individual mandate has apparently failed. 

-An electoral college rout for Obama. Margins were somewhat smaller than in 2008, of course, but he only fails to hold two states he won in 2008, both traditionally red anyway. Victories in Virginia, NH, FL, and Ohio most impressive.

-Tea Party costs GOP again! In 2010, GOP would have taken the Senate if not for nomination of crazy, extreme candidates in Delaware and Nevada. This year it's Missouri and Indiana.

-Dems make gains in Senate, despite having to defend 23 seats to the GOP 10. Also, members added on the Dem side are more progressive, such as Warren in MA and Baldwin in WI.

-Now, Obama and Republicans must find a way to compromise on fiscal cliff, deficit, tax reform, immigration reform, and other important challenges facing the nation. The future of the country depends on it.

The most dishonest convention speech ever?

Well, to be a fact-checker the day after Ryan's much anticipated, and highly dishonest and disingenuous, convention speech! Where does one begin? The GOP--and Ryan in particular--lives in an "up is down" sort of world. 

How else does one explain Ryan's assertion that the President ignored the recommendations made by the Simpson-Bowles debt commission?  The very commission that Ryan himself was on, and voted against the commission's own recommendations and convinced the other Republicans on the commission to follow suit. More here: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/paul-ryan-fails----the-truth/2012/08/29/bbfe1eac-f254-11e1-b74c-84ed55e0300b_blog.html#pagebreak

Or the assertion that Obamacare diverts funding from Medicare---the very same reductions that were included in Ryan's own plan?

Or the assertion that the President has resided over the most deficit spending in history, ignoring the fact that he--Ryan--voted for all the tax cuts and spending increases of the GW Bush era?

And there were more. See, for instance, here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106730/ryan-most-dishonest-convention-speech-five-lies-gm-medicare-deficit-medicaid

Add to these other Romney-Ryan blatantly dishonest assertions (Obama gutting welfare reform; the "you didn't build it" attack; the claim that Romney-Ryan will balance the budget) and it's no wonder journalists, fact-checkers, and citizens have a tough time cutting through the bull. It's dizzying...

The Romney-Ryan campaign may just be the most dishonest major campaign in modern American history, where up is down, black is white, and fact-checkers be damned.. Hopefully--and I am skeptical--the American people will see through the lies and dishonesty and misdirection and mendacity come November.

Oh, and by the way, the economy is the major issue for this campaign, right? Just curious, what exactly is the Romney-Ryan plan for recovery? I, for one, haven't seen one, yet we are told that a vote for R-R is a vote for economic recovery? Just want to make sure I've got that straight.... 

The Weekend Link

Ezra Klein writes about the "Do-Lot" 111th Congress:

The votes are (mostly) counted. The Republicans have clearly and decisively won. But did the Democrats actually lose?

They lost the election, certainly. And many of them lost their jobs. But the point of legislating isn’t job security. It’s legislation. And on that count the members of the 111th Congress succeeded wildly, even historically.

Timothy Egan writes that Obama saved capitalism, and lost the mid-terms because of it:

For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price.

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated. Why bet on a liberal Democrat? Here’s why: the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power.

The Achievements of Governance

With the electorate ostensibly sending a message to President Obama and the Democratic Party in the 2010 mid-term elections, there is no shortage of punditry as to the reasons why voters turned their backs on the Democrats. Whether implicit or explicit, these pundits point to Democratic failures—failure to reduce unemployment more rapidly, failure to frame their agenda within a grand narrative that resonates, etc.

What has largely gone unnoticed—or at least underappreciated—is just how much this president and the Democratic congress achieved legislatively over the past two years. Healthcare reform, the stimulus, and financial regulatory reform, of course, have received all the headlines—and rightfully so—but there have been a myriad of progressive legislative achievements that have gone relatively unnoticed, without the fanfare, anger, faux outrage, and demagoguery of the healthcare debate.

Among others, these include:

-The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for workers to sue for pay discrimination based on gender.

-Tripling the size of the AmeriCorps public service program

-Hate Crimes legislation, making it federal crime to commit an assault based on sexual orientation.

-Student Loan reform, discontinuing a forty-five year program that provided federal subsides and guarantees to private student loan lenders, with the Department of Education now handling such loans directly without profit.

-New rules on credit card companies, banning sudden arbitrary interest rate hikes

-A stimulus package that provided investments in education, health care, a national electronic health records system, infrastructure, green energy, and more.

-Healthcare reform that will extend health insurance to over 95 percent of Americans and does much to begin the process of bending the cost curve

-Financial regulatory reform, which modernizes the regulatory apparatus and rules for the 21^st century, while also creating an independent Financial Consumer Protection Agency

These are what Rachel Maddow calls “the underpinnings of the most legislatively productive 21 months in decades”…characterized as “policy, not politics”. It’s safe to say that the Democrats used their majorities to get stuff done, to govern, rather than politicking in anticipation of the next election. For that reason, it has been a two-year super majority well spent.

Mid-Term Post Mortem

I’m a little late to this but, hey; it’s been a busy week.

As expected, Republicans have won a sizeable majority in the House of Representatives and failed to win the Senate, despite making some gains there as well, resulting in divided government for at least the next two years.

Republicans were the big winners, but why? As I’ve pointed out several times in the past (here, here, and here), it’s sickening to think that the same folks that (a) were largely responsible for the structural weakening of the American economy and the germination of the financial crisis over the past decade; and (b) did everything in their power to block the Democrats’ economic recovery agenda over the past two years, have now been rewarded with large electoral gains. Now, obviously, the economy is still in rough shape, what with unemployment still hovering between 9 and 10 percent. But does anyone truly believe that the recovery would have been stronger and quicker under Republican governance?

Which brings us to those pundits who maintain, “if only Obama and the Democrats had spent more time ‘focusing’ on the economy, growth would be higher, unemployment lower, and Democrats would still have a Congressional majority”. Of course, as Paul Krugman points out, these people fail to specify what a greater “focus” on the economy would have consisted of. Would greater “focus” consist of a larger, more robust stimulus package? Or simply the president touring the country, repeating over and over, “We’re totally focused on the economy”? Of course, as it turns out, those who assert that the president hasn’t focused enough on jobs and the economy generally wanted a smaller stimulus package (or none at all) and have attempted to block (oftentimes successfully) all subsequent economic recovery legislation in the Senate, from extension of unemployment insurance to tax cuts for small businesses to aid for states and municipalities.

As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have noted, we are essentially “giving the keys back to the folks who crashed the car.” Very disheartening, indeed.

The Economic and Political Consequences of an inadequate stimulus

Krugman:

What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus has been a political catastrophe. Yes, things are better than they would have been without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the unemployment rate would probably be close to 12 percent right now if the administration hadn’t passed its plan. But voters respond to facts, not counterfactuals, and the perception is that the administration’s policies have failed.

The tragedy here is that if voters do turn on Democrats, they will in effect be voting to make things even worse.

The resurgent Republicans have learned nothing from the economic crisis, except that doing everything they can to undermine Mr. Obama is a winning political strategy. Tax cuts and deregulation are still the alpha and omega of their economic vision.

What the Democrats are up against, part 2:

More here.

What the Democrats are up against:

Review of "Unequal Democracy"

My review of Larry Bartels' Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.

The Effects of the Citizens United Ruling, phase I

Back in January, when Scott Brown was elected as the junior Senator from Massachusetts, Democrats were handed a defeat that would prove to be a giant thorn in their sides, as passing anything out of the Senate become much more complicated. The day after Brown's election, another event, however, was deemed--by myself and many others--as a much deeper long-term blow to Democratic electoral prospects: The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which has opened a floodgate of undisclosed corporate-funded ads that attack Democratic candidates and support Republicans:

In 1907, direct corporate donations to candidates were legally barred in a campaign finance reform push by President Theodore Roosevelt. But that law and others — the foundation for many Watergate convictions — are all but obsolete. This is why many supporters of strict campaign finance laws are wringing their hands.

Certainly, it is still illegal for corporations to contribute directly to candidates. But they now have equally potent ways to exert their influence. This election year is the first since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows corporations for the first time to finance ads that directly support or oppose political candidates. And tax laws and loopholes have permitted a shadow campaign network of Republican-leaning nonprofit groups to collect a flood of anonymous donations and spend it widely.

If the Republicans make big gains in the House and Senate on Election Day, there is rare bipartisan consensus that they will owe part of their victory to the millions of dollars raised and spent by these nonprofit groups, much of which has come from businesses.

The groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the American Action Network and Crossroads GPS, which is linked to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, have committed to spending well over $150 million this year. President Obama has railed against these groups as they have poured money into races in which once-secure Democrats are hanging by a thread.

Tea and Crumpets

Three excellent articles--each with a slightly different angle--on the phenomenon known as the Tea Party Movement:

Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones: Tea Party: Old Whine in New Bottles

Matt Taibbi, writing for Rolling Stone magazine: How Corporate Interests and Republican Insiders built the Tea Party

Mark Lilla, writing for The New York Review of Books: The Tea Party Jacobins

Libertarianism

The Tea Kettle Movement

I don't always agree with Tom Friedman, but I think he asks an important question in his latest column:

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?

Life is so painful for the very rich

Krugman:

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Graph of the day:

Via Ezra Klein:

Economic Commentary via Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf:

Krugman:
Reiterates why the 2009 stimulus was not sufficient enough
Warns against repeating the same mistakes of 1938
Blasts the mere thought of extending the Bush-era tax cuts

Wolf:
On the political genius of supply-side economics
Obama was too cautious in fearful times:

So what is going to happen? I assume that, after the midterm elections, resurgent Republicans will offer new tax cuts and ignore the fiscal deficits. They will pretend that this has nothing to do with any reviled stimulus, though it is much the same thing – increasing fiscal deficits, thereby offsetting private frugality. That would put the administration on the spot. It would have to choose between vetoing the tax cuts and accepting them, so allowing the Republicans to get the credit for their “yacht and mansion-led” recovery. Any recovery is better than none. But it could have been much better than this. Those who were cautious when they should have been bold will pay a big price.

Graph of the day:

Via Ezra Klein:

Gluttons For Punishment

What He Said

Paul Krugman:

I had hoped that we would do better this time. But it turns out that politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes. And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

The Tragedy of Democracy

As my previous post attempted to demonstrate, the Republicans, as the minority party, have been wildly successful in blocking--or at least delaying and weakening--Democratic efforts for economic recovery. This is a tragedy in itself, since millions of Americans are suffering every day. But this is also a tragedy of democracy. Democratic theory will have you believe that political actors/parties are competing within a more or less even electoral marketplace. The actions of said political actors and parties are understood by voters and are judged accordingly, namely with electoral reward or punishment. Outcomes are judged by their perceived causal origins.

But in this situation, Republican actions are highly shielded from clear public view--similar to a market externality in the language of economics--while Democrats--as the party in power--are judged by the ultimate outcomes of their policies. Largely hidden from those outcomes are the tools, procedures, and methods used by the minority party to prevent the majority party's intended outcomes. Instead, there are undemocratic forces at play--particularly within the Senate--and imperfect information available to the voting public. The role played by the Republicans' strategy of obstruction barely enters the electoral equation. That is the tragedy.

***
UPDATE: I missed this earlier, but Matt Yglesias makes some similar points in this piece describing how the routine use of the filibuster is undermining democratic accountability.