Sunday Reading
Here’s a few links to some longer pieces that might be of interest on a lazy Sunday:
1. How Democrats Can Win on the Economy — this is the full release of the Democracy Corps poll/research effort that I referenced earlier this week. At the link, you can find the fill report as well as the crosstabs, but here are a couple of key points:
- Current Democratic narratives fail to meet voters where they are and how they perceive and experience a very tough new economy. Since 2009, two-thirds have viewed the economy negatively, with a surge of people reporting reduced wages and benefits.
- The Republicans have lost major ground with voters on their signature issue, addressing the budget deficit and spending (44 percent, down from 51 percent a month ago), though voters are holding back from Democrats and President Obama on the economy.
- To get heard anew, Democrats must do the counter-intuitive – forget the past, the financial crisis and recovery. For people, the economy is a set of powerful on-going realities: a middle class smashed and struggling, American jobs being lost, the country and people in debt and the nexus of big money and power that leaves people excluded.
2. Melissa Harris-Perry writes about Three Things I Love About the Herman Cain Campaign. This is good stuff and most of her commenters here do not get the point. Harris-Perry reminds everyone that there are reasons why the black community is not as monolithic as white politicians and pundits try to maintain. But the black community still is working on voting their best interests (and not always getting what they want), rather than succumb to the interests of those they’d like to be.
3. Kevin Drum notes that the people who make the argument that the stimulus didn’t work, aren’t even paying attention to the data they provide. (Clusterstock provides additional data on the effect of the stimulus on the GDP and what its withdrawal might mean.) This represents the genuine Achilles heel of the Obama Administration — policies that ricked a great deal to get the financial system in some order, and little policy meant to deal with making regular Americans whole from the economy that the GOP ran into a ditch.
Ever since hilzoy left the blogosphere I’d been looking for someone with her talent for explainingcomplex matters at length without ever becoming boring, someone equally as solidly progressive. The nearest thing I’ve found as a replacement is a Nevadan blog and blogger named Desert Beacon. For a good sample of what she — no name but occasional hints about gender — can do, check out this example, a careful comparison of current Republican policies with those that were in the platform that helped elect Reagan. Worth passing on to any wavering Democrat who has been influenced by the rightward trend both parties have been on.
Thanks for that link, Prup — that is a dynamite bit of writing.
I agree thanks P . Except this part…
“The Republicans would prefer a Depression so as to use the economy as a campaign issue in 2012.”
That is widely known. It isn’t some secret that is now being discovered. I think that republicans are very frank on that point.
You get about 3 to 7 pieces that good every week. Just don’t back away because they seem to be too Nevada-oriented. In fact, they give pictures that resonate throughout the country. That’s why I have been saying the state-centered blogs are so much more important than the ‘new Village’ of the national ones.