Look around you. Feeling good about the country? Think it’s going in a good direction? The harsh political reality is that the party in power – the Democrats hold the presidency and a slight majority in Congress – gets the blame for anything that goes wrong, even if the problems result from the legacy of past administrations. I think that while the Afghanistan exit will create some minor lingering negativity, voters are more likely to be swayed by domestic issues (and those international issues that have crucial domestic impact). America is truly more in the middle than many Dems might like. While southern border immigration matters, the body politic is getting tired of the story. But even as COVID consequences are falling, too many moderate-to-conservative voters believe that, despite a surge in job opportunities, whatever economic difficulties that continue are a direct result of excessive vaccine and mask mandates and “inflationary” spending in a liberal administration.
Statistics and mathematics say otherwise, but internal bickering by young and inexperienced Democratic purists against blue dog Dem hardliners in states with serious conservative leanings has produced nothing in the cold hard light of “what have you done for me lately?” metric. They had to wait unless they lost the Virginia gubernatorial race by a nose for the Democratic House to pass the bipartisan “part-one” of the infrastructure package. The GOP has figured it out with tough and consistent messaging: killer “inflation” from reckless Democratic spending, creeping “socialism,” economic madness against fossil fuels that drive the nation and wasted money spent in our public schools to turn children into America-hating puppets by assessing blame under “critical race theory.”
In the war of words, the GOP hammers their buzz words hard with every election campaign. Red states see COVID as “over” and not requiring “forced” preventative measures. As successful Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin also discovered, staying on buzz-word message without a toxic Trump presence in this swing state worked. Democrats, meanwhile, refused to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and were hamstrung by coal-state “moderate” Democratic Senator (WVa), Joe Manchin (see my November 2nd Manchin-ian Heresy blog) in passing their greater and second $1.75/$1.85 trillion infrastructure legislation.
Dems, you have facts on your side, but you just do not know how to explain them or ordinary voters. Simplify. Create new buzz words. Explain your new “putting new hard dollar values into the pockets of those not in that top 5% of money and wealth.” Stop “GOP special interest politics”… rewarding the rich. It’s not just about running against Donald Trump anymore. Americans are scared, frustrated and deeply divided! What’s in it for America and me, they ask?
For those who believe that the nation is just fine without continuing to address the pandemic, here is a sobering report that tells us all how we got it so very wrong in the first place… and how we might continue. The November 3rd BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) examined the impact of COVID on life expectancy in 37 countries. Not only does the United States have the highest number of COVID deaths on earth (now heading towards 800,000), but it has had the second highest reduction in life expectancy: 2.3 years for men, 1.6 years for women. The odd aspect of the report shows that these negative statistics reflect a greater infection/mortality rate for younger people than in most of the other nations studied.
Researchers in the US have discovered that the two-month ebb/two-month surge pattern of recent COVID outbreaks is most extreme in Republican states where vaccine and mask mandates are not required. What has been true since vaccines (plus the boosters) have become available and widely deployed, the economy and pressures on the healthcare system are negatively impacted most in those states. And what has been true since the pandemic began – the economy needs national COVID containment to grow normal consumer/business behavior – continues as red state resistance among the remain unvaccinated solidifies even more. It’s the economy, stupid! Link COVID containment to the economy!!! We so close to the end of COVID: new treatments, boosters and shots for 5-to-11 year old kids! Next mega-issue.
Manchin and GOP stalwarts believe that the dollar could face an untenable inflationary surge from these infrastructure expenditures. Really? Ah, Dems, your messaging is so far off. Aside from touting what these bills would obviously do if passed… above and beyond fix roads, bridges, levees, our power grid, dams, etc… tell us they also support childcare and early education – a boon to working mothers – and cap prescription expenses and provide coverage for hearing aids for seniors on Medicare. The battle about taxing billionaires is tilting toward Republican values, even as most of the country agrees that this should be the easy button in funding. When specifics in the bills are explained to voters, these resonate exceptionally well. Simplify. Describe the everyman benefits.
Dems also need to explain the difference between an investment – money which generates growth and a rate of return – and a pure expense, a naked cost. The infrastructure bills reflect a belief in the future of America; they are investments which are expected to make us more productive and globally competitive. And as for inflation, not only are these dollars going to be spread over many years, even at the revised $1.85T level, “part 2” (Build Back Better) of the infrastructure package, if passed as a budget reconciliation measure, actually represents a relatively small effective impact on our budget and deficit as Michael Hiltzik, writing for the November 3rd Los Angeles Times, explains:
In the context of federal spending, however, the size of the “Build Back Better” package comes to relative pennies. As I’ve reported before, in any context its benefits far outweigh its costs… [P]olitics is about compromise, especially with Democrats holding razor-thin control of the Senate, so we can mourn the provisions that have been dropped to cut costs and still appreciate what’s still in (so far)… Let’s start our inquiry by explaining what’s meant by $1.7 trillion in federal spending. That’s over 10 years, so on average it comes to $170 billion a year. That’s the number that needs to be compared to other claims on the federal budget, which are typically given as annual figures.
The biggest single discretionary expenditure in the federal budget is on defense. In September, Congress easily passed a $768-billion defense budget, adding $25 billion to President Biden’s request even though the U.S. is actually winding down its defense presence overseas. That’s about 4½ times the average annual cost of ‘Build Back Better”; projected over 10 years, it would come to nearly $7.7 trillion. Manchin… voted for every defense bill for the last decade, $9.1 trillion over 10 years.
[Manchin and Republicans] fretted about the prospect that more federal spending would trigger more ‘rising inflation [and] crippling debt,’ creating ‘a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans.’… Is that so? The average U.S. inflation rate over the last decade has been about 1.73%. If anything, that’s healthy — it’s well below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% a year and high enough to avoid harmful deflation if the economy weakens. It’s also well below the annual average over the previous three decades, which was 3.5%.
In other words, Manchin’s [and the GOP’s] inflation concerns are just specious. The economy hasn’t been overheating, and there has been no ‘inflation tax’ in recent years… It’s also proper to consider the Biden program in the context of the federal budget as it is today — about $6.6 trillion in fiscal year outlays. That’s about 31.6% of GDP. Add [the annualize infrastructure] $170 billion to the sum, even without covering it with higher taxes, and the budget’s share of GDP rises to 32.4%. So, Dems, pass it already!!! Next mega-issue.
“Creeping socialism”? Merriam Webster defines “socialism” as “a system of society or group living in which there is no private property [and] a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” That does not include social programs like public education, Medicare, childcare or Medicaid. Dems, get that message clear! Nothing in any of these programs gets the government to take over our land or our industries!
Fossil fuels? If our paying trillions and trillions of dollars to undo the damage that such fuels have caused – through clearly demonstrated climate change, costing federal and state emergency services, insurance companies (funded by all of us) and decimating private land and businesses – is acceptable, then by all means stop trying to reduce carbon emissions by eliminating fossil fuels, especially coal. But remember, our consumer-driven economy makes the United States the greatest per capita polluter on earth. Wildfires, searing heat, coastal erosion, killer droughts, intense tropical storms, flooding, etc., etc. These all have hard dollar costs to each and every American. This is not just a mega-issue for rising generations; it is a “here and now” tax on all of us. Dems? Are you listening? Call it the “Our Huge Hidden Republican Tax.”
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