February 1, 2010

Goldman Sachs - "Jobless Recovery"


Regardless of whatever bill the Democrats cobble together on jobs for the President to sign, be it 1000 pages or 2000, whether it costs $200 billion or $1 trillion, it won't matter. Whether it comes in a week or 6 well-thought-out, considered, debated and optimized weeks won't matter either.


It's already February. By the time any of those shovel-ready jobs kick in it will be at least May. And even in that optimistic scenario, not all the jobs will kick in at once. There would be a ramp up in government funded jobs. Would 6 months be enough to add millions of jobs? Would tax breaks for small businesses be enough to add millions of jobs to the economy this year? Nothing will add jobs back that fast, nothing. As Goldman Sachs points out, regardless of what the government does, much more is going on and this is playing out as a jobless recovery.

And that means a number of things for the Presidential election. It means that the Democrats, who fiddled on health care while 'Rome' burned on jobs, are going to pay the price in November no matter what President Obama goes out and says on their behalf.

However, the Democrats do have one hope and that is to drag down the Republicans in the process, by any means possible. There's a number of ways they can do that, and they're likely to try all of them to see which one(s) sticks.

They could try to drive a wedge between the GOP and the grass roots Tea Party energy. There's evidence they've already started doing this. If they can convince the public that the GOP is not the answer to the economic situation, they can definitely minimize the damage of the upcoming elections. If there's no one to vote for, the grass roots anger will just not vote. The easiest way to drive that wedge is to try to associate the current problems with the Bush years from 2001 to 2006 (not until 2008, because the last two years had a Democratic Congress). Blame Bush. Check.

Another thing they could try to do is to get the GOP on board with their agenda on jobs. Whether whole or in part, the GOP buying in to the jobs bill serves as an insurance policy for the Democrats. If the jobs don't come back they can say, "hey these are bi-partisan ideas, clearly this is a complex situation and you can't blame us for not fixing it faster. We tried every idea including the ideas from the GOP." In other words, the issue can be de-coupled from the Democrats specifically. The added benefit is that if the jobs do come back, they can take credit and still try to spin that they were big enough to include some GOP ideas too. Of course because of all of it, they are clearly better suited to lead. Have they tried that? Check.

Another thing they might try is to re-focus on health care, as if it was a panacea for everything that ails America. Yeah, they're going to try this one too. But for the life of me I cannot see the logic of it. The public doesn't want it, at best they think it's a diversion from the real problem of jobs and debt and economic recovery. Either they really believe that they are saving the economy and not adding a trillion dollars more (minimum) in crippling national debt, or else they really believe they can sell the voters on the idea they are saving the economy. Either way, there's evidence that they are going to try this too.

So we all know this is coming. What do we do? Be aware when you see it, and share what you see with those who will listen. The message is always important and we can't let Democrats control the conversation. They practically own the media so that means as conservatives we have to try twice as hard to get the message through.

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