Politicians and Tea Leaves

Can’t have a tea party without tea leaves, and by all accounts, the Democrats read them horribly wrong. 18% of the Massachusetts voters who just elected a Republican senator voted for Obama in the Presidential election. The heartland has spoken, and Republicans are jubilant; the independents who defected have returned to the conservative fold… or have they? Exactly what are the voters saying? That Democrats are bad and Republicans are good… or is it a deeper message that lies in wait for the unwary of both parties. Somehow, the Republicans, who are the bastions of deregulation and lower taxes for the rich, have pushed Obama and the Democrats into a corner in which the latter are being blamed for big spending to resuscitate a truly arrogant and ungrateful Wall Street seemingly without doing anything visible for the average American.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is losing his solid Democratic constituency – “Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said [January 22^nd] that they would vote against Bernanke, following the lead of Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) a day earlier. Many senators who had been viewed by Senate leaders as safe votes for Bernanke said they were undecided.” (1/22 Washington Post) While he is credited for a reasonable response to the financial crisis, Bernanke’s not having seen it coming and having looked the other way as Wall Street pigs gorged on the overleveraged bubble that made them rich might become fatal to his bid to extend his Fed chairmanship beyond the January 31^st expiration date.

Where 40% of the unemployed have been out of a job for over six months, where the true unemployment rate (which count part-timers and those who have given up looking) is closer to 17%, where there are six people applying for every job that comes up, where seniors have lost their savings and homeowners their home values, where small businesses are failing in droves topped only by the number of good people facing foreclosure, where a horse-traded-into-oblivion healthcare reform plan lets insurance and pharmaceutical companies have their way while folks are watching the possibility of costs continuing to rise and benefits falling even as Nebraska wants to avoid paying their fair share of Medicaid costs and where individual Wall Street bonuses for oh-so-many exceed the lifetime earnings of most Americans… what exactly do you think America wants?

Religious groups are toasting over the death of liberal social issues… or at least they think that’s what the tea parties were all about. Fiscal conservatives are toasting that the days of profligate spending on social programs are over, that all attempts to tax and regulate big business must now fall by the wayside… but Americans seem to be saying that they want their economy saved first, and everything else can wait… and if you are spending billions… no trillions… and the only winners are the fat cats, it’s time to replace the party that made that happen.

As big business celebrates the Supreme Court decision that they think will allow them to buy business-friendly candidates into office so that the rich get richer… doesn’t anybody really understand what this is all about? Americans are seeing massive new spending proposals, rich winners who got bailed out and an economy that everyone keeps saying is out of the recession but is clearly still a depression for a huge number of unemployed and underemployed Americans… the rest of America is just plain scared that they will be next. We do not believe the recession is over! We do not believe that the recovery is beginning! We do not believe much of anything you are telling us, and people who say otherwise and are not taking steps we can understand will help the average American – Republican or Democrat – are going to be pushed out of office! This isn’t against healthcare reform, it’s about priorities and ending the rein of special interests over all of us!

The President’s State of the Union message on Wednesday will try and convince America that it would have been much worse for the average American had the stimulus programs not passed, that a new and second stimulus program is essential and that, as he said, “I just want to have some rules in place so when these [Wall Street] guys make dumb decisions, you don't end up having to foot the bill.” He’ll make a populist appeal for a downsized healthcare plan, but “populism” is the name of his new game. His most recent proposal for bank reform would prohibit banks from owning hedge funds and private equity funds that might engage in high-risk trades that could endanger the health of the nation's banks or run counter to the best interests of the banks’ customers. The message sent stocks plunging to their greatest drop in ten months with Wall Streeters muttering how such regulatory efforts would prevent restoration of the credit markets for small businesses and consumers. But now it’s people against the evil banks, so maybe that will sell.

It is amazing how many times this phrase is repeated, but it is even more amazing how many times politicians seem to forget their priorities. IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a forest among these trees somewhere.