Why Obama Will "Own" The Recession

Basically, because his policies are destined to prolong the downturn.

Now today's Obamacrats are apparently going to try and Hooverize President Bush in an effort to shield themselves from the potential political fallout of a prolonged recession. It will take years to fix the American economy, Obama says, and years of trillion-dollar budget deficits to do it. And everyday it seems that Team Obama tries to lower economic expectations, such as bearishly predicting that unemployment would hit double-digits.

The not-so-subtle message in the middle of all these pessimistic prognostications: When ya'll go to vote in 2010 and 2012 and a) unemployment is still as high as it's been in decades, b) income growth is sluggish at best, c) the budget deficit is running at a trillion bucks a year, and d) stock prices remain stubbornly low -- hey, don't blame us, you can't rebuild Rome in a day or even in a first term. Remember, Bush really left us a mess.

That's precisely the strategy behind leftwing lunacy like this, where Democrat control of Congress is dismissed as unimportant to the overall point that every bad thing that happens is because of Republicans.

The fact is, Obama is already warning Americans (and doing everything short of getting on his knees for Democrats in Congress) that the recession is going to get much, much worse before it gets better. I suppose he thinks if he warns Americans before January 20, they won't hold him accountable in four years when he reminds them that he warned them.

Alas, such will not be the case. If Obama and the Democrats don't see a turnaround within a year, I suspect most voters will dump Democrats in 2010 and Obama in 2012, history-making presidency or not. Americans are an impatient lot, and if unemployment gets even close to double digits, voters will be panic-stricken. We haven't seen 10% unemployment in a generation, and there's a whole bunch of 20-somethings who think having a job is a constitutional right.

The problem with Obama's stimulus recovery plan manifold. First, the jobs his We Piddle Around programs will product are ill-suited to today's work force. Office workers aren't skilled in the building industry, and most women simply can't do the sort of physical labor required to build bridges and roads (sorry, Amanda). Worse yet, Obama's plan is predicated on the idea that the unemployed American is a 20-year-old male. But with women making up nearly half the workforce, you have to wonder how many of them will want to operate backhoes and cranes. This isn't to bash women; we just tend to work in offices, service industries, and other less labor-intensive jobs.

Secondly, the amount of money involved may not be enough to encourage spending. Our economy runs on consumption, and consumers aren't doing that right now. We've heard nothing but how terrible the economy is, how bad jobs are, and how we're going to hell in a handbasket for a couple of years. What do these morons who say these things think is going to happen? Outside of the hapless idiots taking out interest-only mortgages, most people have spent the last year reducing their expenses. That's what people did with the 1,200 bucks they got last spring.

If Obama wants people to spend, he's either going to have to let the cycle go (with it's obvious pain and suffering) or he's going to have to pass out such huge checks that people are comfortable spending it. I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $10,000. Not because I think the government should be passing out welfare to everybody, but if Democrats honestly expect people to buy refrigerators and cars, then they have to make the payoff large enough to overcome people's reluctance to let go of any extra money right now.

Finally, Obama's plans include so much radical restructuring of our economy that even people who support some of his ideas are going to balk. Lots of people lurv the idea of a single payer health care system (well, until they live with it, that is), but remaking 1/7th of the U.S. economy would cause even more turmoil, expense, and unemployment than leaving things as they are. What happens to all the insurance company employees when insurance is no longer needed? Are they all supposed to become health care workers? What happens to all the doctors and nurses who don't want to work under socialized medicine? How do we handle the radical change that's being discussed?

And, really, how can Obama avoid taking responsibility when he will be so actively meddling in the economy? It will be his decision to forego deep and permanent new tax cuts, his decision to not extend the Bush tax cuts, his decision on how to spend the remaining $350 billion in TARP money, his decision to quasi-nationalize healthcare, his decision to push a cap-and-trade carbon emission program and his decision to spend hundreds of billions on a "green" industrial policy. It might even be his decision to try and reunionize the American laborforce. Obama will "own" the battered economy, perhaps almost literally, given Uncle Sam's bailout binge.

Liberals think that every unemployed person can go work in "green technologies" and that this will fix the economy. But not all Americans will either want to work in those industries or have the skills to do so (not to mention not living where these industries develop). No matter how much the useful idiots try to blame George Bush, this recession will be Barack Obama's come January 20.

Maybe Obama needs a little help.

Joe the Plumber as Object Lesson

Last week, a guy put Barack Obama on the spot regarding his tax plan.



Obama's "share spread the wealth" statement was probably the first time a lot of folks had heard Obama say so bluntly what he thinks about your hard-earned money: it needs to go to someone else who hasn't made as much because it's all about "fairness," not opportunity.

In the latest example of tolerance, the Left is out to smear Joe the Plumber. We've been told Joe is related to Charles Keating, owes back taxes, he's not a licensed plumber and now will probably lose his job.

All because he asked a question that made The Obamessiah look bad.

Get ready for eight years of Gestapo tactics like this if Obama is elected president.

Question The One? You'll be roasted alive.

Expose him as the socialist he is? We'll dig through your tax records for the last 20 years.

Let's just start calling it "The Obama Treatment." If you have the audacity to ask an inconvenient question, get ready for the enema of a lifetime because, to the Left, the problem wasn't Obama's answer, it was the guy who asked it.

UPDATE: Here is Echidne of the Snakes post on the subject:

The media has decided that Joe the plumber is the crystallizing moment of the third debate. It's all very silly, because Joe voted for McCain in the primaries (so how undecided is he?) and because nobody seems to know if the 250,000 dollars he mentions as his income is revenue or profit (which is what he'd be actually taxed on) and so on.

Still, we are supposed to see Joe as the composite American, the average guy, whose life is exactly like the lives of everybody else! Exactly! Except that Joe is white and can never worry about the health exception to abortion, say. And I'd bet that people who write about how very average he is have rather little in common with Joe.

Where to begin? First of all, one can have voted for someone in the primary but changed one's mind about the candidate since. I've been an advocate for John McCain, but I can see how someone could have become disillusioned with him since the primaries.

Secondly, to my knowledge, Joe the Plumber didn't say he made $250k a year. He said he wanted to buy a plumbing business which had the potential for such income. A business that employs two or more people can, quite easily, make $250,000 each year.

Third, I'm not sure how abortion relates to Joe's question about taxes. The Joe the Plumber as Everyman theory is with regards to his ability to make and keep money. Anyone--including women--can be plumbers or own their own businesses. And Barack Obama's tax plan will cost those owners, regardless of their ability to get abortions.

And Joe, in fact, has quite a bit in common with the average American. He's working. He's trying to do better for himself and his family. He's concerned about the economy and how Obama's plans will affect him. Except for his lack of a womb, he sounds quite a bit like a lot of women I know, too.

UPDATE x2: Dan Riehl discusses the O body count.

The O-body count is growing and the Left and Obama haven't really even achieved any power of the executive kind so far. Everyone who has gotten in the way of Obama's path to power has been horribly run down. It's also obvious that they would happily destroy them if they could.