Grasping the Obvious

When we conducted our election-night national survey after last year’s Republican sweep, voters strongly chose new investment over a new national austerity. They thought Democrats were more likely to champion the middle class. And as has become clear in the months since, the public does not share conservatives’ views on rejecting tax cuts and cutting retirement programs. Numerous recent polls have shown that the public sides with the president and Democrats on raising taxes to get to a balanced budget.

But in smaller, more probing focus groups, voters show they are fairly cynical about Democratic politicians’ stands. They tune out the politicians’ fine speeches and plans and express sentiments like these: “It’s just words.”

  NYT

Why on earth would they feel that way?

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans.

Has Qadafi pointed out yet that President #Compromise has lost his legitimacy to rule? Perhaps not without armed rebels in the streets.

GOVERNMENT operates by the wrong values and rules, for the wrong people and purposes, the Americans I’ve surveyed believe. Government rushes to help the irresponsible and does little for the responsible. Wall Street lobbyists govern, not Main Street voters. Vexingly, this promotes both national and middle-class decline yet cannot be moved by conventional democratic politics. Lost jobs, soaring spending and crippling debt make America ever weaker, unable to meet its basic obligations to educate and protect its citizens. Yet politicians take care of themselves and party interests, while government grows remote and unresponsive, leaving people feeling powerless.

[...]

BARACK OBAMA can’t catch a break from the American public on the economy, even though he prevented a depression and saved global capitalism.

There were other better ways to do that and save democracy and the country as well. And…it ain’t over yet.

If there is an article of faith among contemporary center-left leaders, it is that investment in education will pay dividends with increased productivity and increased income. And yet the evidence is piling up that the economy is not working for the middle class. Productivity and education increase but wages do not follow.

Not to mention, we’re not investing in education. We’re cutting it.

I’m far from expert on finances and economics, but it seems to me that if the government is cutting spending and the consumer, who now has little or no government assistance, realizes he’s the one who has to “tighten his belt,” or maybe he loses his job because his employer decided he had to cut expenses, the consumer will also cut spending. What really “trickles down” is the stoppage of spending, not earnings and prosperity (thanks, Ronnie, you bonehead) as we see time and time again (a fine and timely example being the airline industry). So if nobody’s spending, how the heck is the economy supposed to improve? Who’s putting money into it?

The government saved irresponsible executives who bankrupted their own companies, hurt many people and threatened the welfare of the country. When Mr. Obama championed the bailout of the auto companies and allowed senior executives at bailed-out companies to take bonuses, voters concluded that he was part of the operating elite consensus. If you owned a small business that was in trouble or a home or pension that lost much of its value, you were on your own. As people across the country told me, the average citizen doesn’t “get money for free.” Their conclusion: Government works for the irresponsible, not the responsible.

That's because they work for themselves.

Maybe we’re not so stupid after all.