Saying NO is not the essence of good government, no matter how much the current Republicans would like to believe it is. You need people who say YES, or NO, to things based on their merits. barfo
Bullshit. Big govenment is here to stay, regardless of who is in power or what their intentions are. Big government is good for big business, and THAT'S who is really in power.
Almost nothing govt. does merits taxing us, borrowing for, or spending upon. Start with the NO position and be really hard to convince to vote YES. That's the kind of person I want to vote for. Maybe if we look beyond the top two on the ticket, we might find people to elect that aren't bought and paid for by big business.
Impossible. First of all, the media wouldn't allow it because they LOVE the two-party system. Makes things nice and easy for them. Good and Evil. And since most of Americans are sheep, they'll fall right into lockstep. And if by chance some fringe candidate caught lightning in a bottle and got elected to a position of power where REAL change could be made, he'd be dead before sundown. Too much money and power at stake.
You're wearing one of barfo's tinfoil hats. Last election cycle, a bunch of misguided people got out the vote for Obama. This time around, there's a tea party movement. People are seriously looking for an alternative, whether it be to Bush and Republicans or Obama/Pelosi/Reid and Democrats. It's a matter of time.
The "Tea Party" movement. Hilarious. A media-manufactured movement that a lot of people are being fooled into thinking has any kind of chance at any political traction. Too much money, too much power, too much government in the way of any change actually happening. That and the fact that the "leaders" of this movement are hate-filled ideolouges with agendas of their own that have nothing to do with smaller government or social freedoms.
The democrats will lose seats. I think there is a strong potential for the democrats to lose more seats than the usual lost (when a president from another party takes the over). Obama has come out of the box with some very big and bold moves during a time in the economy that brings out fear among voters. The economy has started to slowly turn, or at least bottom out, which may help Obama. But I think there are still a lot of people hurting from the economy and I see votes coming up that will be a "keep Obama in check" kind of votes. So I agree, too little too late for this upcoming round of votes.
It may be too little too late, but maybe people expect too much. The recovery in jobs looks pretty good to me (especially considering that everyone said this would be a jobless recovery). Of course I am not and have not been unemployed, so it is easy for me to look at the graph and think a lot of progress has been made since Obama took over in Jan 2009. Someone who was and still is unemployed might not see it the same way. barfo
It's going to have to be +800 for May, June, July, August, and September to impress enough people by election time.
Lose 7M jobs, gain back 1M, it's not going to make people happy. Lose 7M jobs, gain back 4M, and there will be that many less people upset about being unemployed.
So more jobs is better? I don't think that's a keen insight or controversial. I think the question is, how did you come to the specific numbers that will need to happen for Democrats to see a benefit, relative to where they stand now, from the recovering economy.
At barfo's pace (his graph), the economy won't recover all the jobs lost on Obama's watch by the 2012 election, let alone the 2010 one. What makes you think that a trickle of new jobs against massive losses of jobs on the Dems' watch is going to make people feel good about their policies? Maybe it's the generous extended unemployment benefits! NOT. I think people want good jobs. (the 800K jobs gained figure I suggest is the kind of jobs lost figure in barfo's graph, get it?)
People are already unhappy about the economy. The Democrats are already expected to lose seats. The baseline is not "0 seats lost." The baseline is some number of seats lost, and the question is whether the current positive job growth will help Democrats stem that loss or not. You claimed that for the Democrats to see any benefits (i.e. help stem loss of seats), they'll need to gain 800K jobs per month from now til the election. You still haven't given reasoning or evidence for why that is so. Obviously, more job growth will be better for the incumbent party, but that doesn't in any way suggest that some job growth, even if it doesn't completely wipe out the job losses, won't help the incumbent party to some extent.
Consider the baseline +7 GOP seats in the senate, +27 in the house. To make a difference in the November elections, yes.
Wow, that's some horrific DennyMath (TM). If the trend on the graph continues until the 2012 election, we will recover all the jobs lost since Jan 20 2009 and many more. In fact, the trendline says that we'd be adding something like 2.3 million new jobs *per month* by election day. That probably won't happen, but even if the job growth flattens out at the existing level (instead of continuing to trend upwards), we'd still more than make back all the jobs lost since Jan 20 2009. barfo
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/news/economy/jobs_outlook/ 8M jobs lost through January. 8M / 290,000 = 27 months. But then, barfo's 2.3M new jobs per month claim is reminiscent of this:
