The New Republic

The President is in a ploitical situation right now and for the forseeable future that won't allow him to act in the manner the editors would like . The stimulus package was really quite effective in breaking the fall of the economy and Obama and his party didn't get the acknowledgement or rewards they should have for it . Fortunately , we have a nice payroll tax cut in place now thanks to the President. The general electorate is very quick to take in the anti-government meme of the moment . I certainly think that the convienient deficit cutting mania of the moment is wrong headed , but in order to get more independent voters back in the Dems corner Obama is going to have to get credibility on the issue . If he can forstall really steep cuts until after the election hopefully the economy can get back to better growth and job creation . There have been some particular headwinds faced by the economy in the first half of the year which have effected recent jobs numbers . We did have 3 very good reports before this recent slow down . Many forecasts are for much better growth in the 2nd 1/2 . There are alot of mindless tax policies and issues of private sector governance that need to be corrected and those things can't be blamed on Obama . I'm quite sure he is well aware of these problems and would like to fix them if possible . Rght now he's our best hope to hold off the barbarians at the gate.

- alanwilkov

July 16, 2011 at 12:51am

Very good piece. The one argument I wish that you, your writer and other progressive commentators would flesh out more is the rebuttal of the Republican claim that increasing our already-huge deficits would be disastrous. To the extent that I understand that claim, it's that the deficits will trigger runaway inflation. You rebut it very briefly, but a more thorough debunking is in order. Still, taking President Obama to task for abandoning Keynes is most definitely in order. The irony is that he seems to be making a self-defeating political calculation, which is that ineffective economic policies won't make him a one-term president because he's tacking to the political center (and even to the right of the center). But as you rightly emphasize, a strategy that does not seriously alleviate unemployment could undo him, regardless of where he tries to position himself on the political spectrum.

- Thunderroad

July 16, 2011 at 12:51am

The only disagreement I have with this editorial is its implicit assumption that Obama is capable of hearing this message. I see no reason to believe that he can. It is time to discuss ways to bring real political pressure to bear on the president to force him to hear this message whether he likes it or not.

- AaronW

July 16, 2011 at 4:24am

There will be no push from the White House for stimulus so long as the President has people like Geithner around him who see the need to placate bankers as paramount. It also doesn't help that the President is so dour all the time when speaking about the economy. It's not that he scares people, but he does not give them a whole lot of reason to feel better either, which makes the Republican message that much stronger. I suggest he watch some old footage of FDR, JFK, and Reagan, and get back his gift to inspire, which disappeared after he took the oath. A president can't stop being a politician on the first Wednesday in November of an election year.

- SFergessen

July 16, 2011 at 6:44am

I refer to Cohn's latest post for the Obama strategy to get past the deficit "crisis" and on to the very real unemployment crisis. As for Obama, I would remind readers that Obama did not run as a crisis president and, accordingly, he has not governed as a crisis president. When the financial crisis occurred late in the campaign many viewed his calm demeanor (especailly when compared to his opponent's) as reassuring. Wrong. He should have been running aorund with his hair on fire. The tell was when he kept the same team of economic and political advisors he had already selected, the team that he had selected under entirely different circumstances. Consider FDR, who ran as a crisis president and governed as a crisis president, and even though it would eventually kill him, he seemed to thrive on the rough and tumble politics that was essential to his very successful presidency. Now consider Obama's "concession speech" following the 2010 election, in which he repeated again and again how difficult it is being president. Can one imagine FDR saying such a thing? He absolutely loved being president. And no president (except Lincoln perhaps) faced the extraordinary crises faced by FDR, from the Great Depression to a world war that could very well have been lost.

- rayward

July 16, 2011 at 9:01am

I love TNR, but this doesn't offer much by way as to how to change public opinion. The public buys the household-government equivalance, and strongly opposes more government speneding. They buy GOP arguments about taxes and regulation!

- darklayers

July 16, 2011 at 10:08am

The Democrats do not have to renominate Obama. There are more competent Democrats out there. Some who have shown resolve and intellect in the past few years.

- amidut

July 16, 2011 at 11:40am

Re: amidut The Democrats have to renominate Obama. At this point, Obama is doing better than Carter and Bush I did, and with a worse economy. To subject him to a semi-serious primary challenge just so that you end up with Obama again is embarrassing and counter-productive. Just as a matter of course, who is the last person who lost such a challenge? It took me a while to check Wikipedia: it was Chester Arthur in 1884. James Blaine went on to lose the election to Grover Cleveland. So much for changing horses midstream, especially when Obama is the most popular federal politician in the country and enjoys 70%+ favorability with the Democratic base.

- chaitless

July 16, 2011 at 12:10pm

"The Democrats do not have to renominate Obama. There are more competent Democrats out there. Some who have shown resolve and intellect in the past few years." Personally I prefer Biden or Hillary but if the Democrats ditch Obama now they will definitely lose next year. There ways of putting pressure on Obama to change or modify some policies both domestic and foreign without threatening his reelection.

- arnon

July 16, 2011 at 2:00pm

Corporate America is now making all-time record profits and has been for over a year. Interest rates can go no lower than they are now. This is a Republican Party formula for an explosion of job growth. It is clear that corporate America is never again going to hire a significant number of American workers--not when it can make record profits by employing Third World, often child, labor. Only government jobs can save us from another Great Depression, but Republicans and their wacko base see government jobs as the work of the devil. Obama hasn't got the courage to stand up and talk to the American people about this religious-type fanaticism on the Right. Instead, he is offering to cut Medicare and Social Security in exchange for eliminating a few outrageous tax loopholes for the rich. But he and the Republicans are not the main culprits here. Republicans are going to do what they're going to do--crash our economy by deregulating it and then hold the world economy hostage to keep tax loopholes for the rich in place. It's the voters, stupid--the tens of millions of them who vote for Republicans. Citizen stupidity is always the cause of the decline and/or collapse of a civilization. It appears that our electorate is not smart enough to maintain America as the great country that we are--or once were. Instead of God Bless America, we should be saying God Help America.

- magboy47.

July 16, 2011 at 2:42pm

"Unlike Tea Partiers, the president clearly understands Keynes. Yet he rarely invokes Keynesian logic. In early July, he even parroted the conservative bromide that “government has to start living within its means”—a sentiment that, in the context of responding to a recession, could not possibly be more wrongheaded. " Except for Obamaphile equivalents on the center right of Reaganphiles on the far right, there's little evidence B-HH-Obama understands Keynes (and the HH ain't for Hubert Humphrey). Our current problems are due to a toxic mix of BHO Hooverian economic beliefs plus dithering/compromise as highest goal lack of ideology combined with Repub far right uncompromising tactics and even more insane ideology. Both parties need each other to function as they currently do-- like James C Calhoun or Jeff Davis need a Millard Fillmore or Franklin Pierce or Adolph needs a Neville. Confront them with Lincoln or a Churchill and they have a problem. the sooner the confrontation the better--- Google: J C Calhoun and A. Jackson, nullification. The Repubs believe they have BHO figgered out--BHO ain't gonna change his ways. He'll negotiate away half his position and then blink in the final negotiation. They've been right for two years, why change tactics now (even if the consequences are more drastic)??? We are headed for economic crisis. Given it is coming, the sooner the better. There is still time to challenge BHO, much less the Repubs, with Progressive candidates and policies. My guess is the challenger, if reasonably rational and with some name recognition, has 20% voter support within a week-- over 30% among Democrats. That's devastating for a sitting president. Ask LBJ. He did the right thing, but HH "stood by his man" way too long.

- drofnats1

July 16, 2011 at 4:29pm

Perhaps it would be more productive if, rather than talking about challenging Obama in the primary, which would be quixotic and likely counterproductive (think: Eugene McCarthy, 1968, Ted Kennedy, 1980, SDP-Labor split in the election of 1983--how'd those work out? What? The end of a party system that favored Liberals, Ronald Reagan, and the lowest share of the vote for Labor since 1918? Hmm...), people discussed how else to push Obama and Democratic congressmen to the left. Any ideas? I'll throw out what I can on my own. The first two may be at odds with each other: 1) Creating a system of alliances among left-wing interest groups, so that they each support each other, as groups on the right do reflexively, applying pressure as a group, rather than individually 2) Finding a way to reduce the influence of such groups on the party, which leads into... 3) Reemphasizing the party's basis in a Liberalism that provides benefit (and is PERCEIVED as providing benefit) to a majority of society, rather than just to marginalized groups and special interests (which is what many swing voters and even loyal Democrats think the party is oriented toward). 4) Find a way to demand at least SOME unity within the caucus on, say, procedural issues.

- Curran1

July 16, 2011 at 7:21pm

What's so frustrating about this is, as the article and other posters point out, it's largely a self-made crisis, and a self-fulfilling crisis. Things were picking up until the Tea Partiers decided to go to war against the rest of the United States. Now, states are slashing and burning, that means jobs are lost, which means the downward spiral has begun again and it's hit home, finally: many people I know are out of work. If they are out of work us "independent contractors" are out of work. My clients owe me money - they don't have any money to pay. So now what? A lifetime of work is probably going to go down the tubes - and people are literally losing everything they have. Some of the newly unemployed are in their fifties or sixties. Which means what? Meanwhile we hear Great Leader explaining that we must all suffer and cut Medicare. Basically, just to work many of us going in the hole - many of us who'd been earning a little are now having to pay rent to our so-called employers, or make otherwise terrible deals. It's that or do nothing and waste all these years of accomplishment. And, any cash flow is better than no cash flow. But the future is looking terribly bleak. I do think, as pointed out above, that Obama's Republican and pro-business economic advisors maybe should have clued us poor Democrats into the fact, quite some time ago, that MAYBE Obama ain't exactly Karl Marx. But he was pushed very hard by the mighty forces of the Democratic party, especially the rich Democrats, so what could we do? We are still living with the disastrous challenge to Gore mounted by the Naderites. And the Republicans are clearly bats*** crazy. So arrrgghhh.

- Sophia

July 16, 2011 at 7:21pm

I don't think there is anything Washington can do about unemployment. To get the people back to work will require hiring and a change of "animal spirits", a vision and goal. During the depression, the change was Pearl Harbor, now I think we have the money, we don't have the vision that will change the psychology. No Pearl Harbor, at least not yet.

- evans89431

July 16, 2011 at 9:49pm

A primary challenge to Obama would be predictably unsuccessful, and it would weaken Obama to some degree for the general election though to a lesser degree, I suspect, than many contend. The advantage of a challenge from the left would be to force Obama to engage the debate on fiscal priorities. If he is not made to pay some price for his passivity on stimulus spending why and how will he ever behave differently.

- AaronW

July 16, 2011 at 10:50pm

A good article on the economy in the NY Times: "We’re Spent" By DAVID LEONHARDT http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/sunday-review/17economic.html?_r=1

- arnon

July 17, 2011 at 12:07am

The get-real-Obama-is-the-only-alternative-to-Republican-Armageddon reaction to any suggestion of the need for a primary challenge is a case in point as to the sickness in Democratic politics. Ever since Reagan's rise Democrats have been selling off the New Deal and Great Society legacies piecemeal in an effort to win elections. Thus sell-off has accelerated under Obama, but the difference between him and his recent Democratic predecessors is, in this regard, one of quantity, not quality. The question is where is it to stop? At what point have we conceded so much in order to put a Democrat in office that having a "Democrat" in office no longer makes any difference?

- AaronW

July 17, 2011 at 12:41am

Who was it who said that the Democrats/progressives would look back at that 100 day honeymoon period as a historically missed opportunity? That's right, it was me, Mr. Handsome! And not a few other almost-as-good-looking TNR commenters. My suggestion is that Obama propose in exchange for a second stimulus to secure support a phased-in balanced budget amendment to the constitution, rather than in exchange for extending the debt ceiling deadline/crisis/etc. This would answer legitimate suspicions that he and the Democrats don't ever intend to address the deficit "down the road" other than to raise taxes. There could be some wrangling over the outlays-as-percent-of-budget figure (that requires a supermajority to increase), but a constitutional amendment could also give cover to some Republicans to allow a stimulus as a way to "end this problem once and for all."

- Lymon1

July 17, 2011 at 9:01am

Aaron, I agree completely about the strategic problem--triangulation, concessions, where will it end? I'm merely suggesting that the left needs to come up with a way to stop this other than a primary challenge. Best to start that thinking now. Primary challenges don't have a happy history.

- Curran1

July 17, 2011 at 1:16pm

A balanced budget amendment is a terrible idea. And not just because the economics of it are antediluvian. It's wrong also because the forces against tax hikes are stronger than the forces against spending cuts. This is operationally true in the United States. Why is this true? The people who most deserve higher tax rates know who they are and know that they are profiting directly from our reserve currency status, which allows us to run up debts at a discounted price. Once that historical accident expires, their taxes have to go up. Since they are rich and reasonably well-informed politically, they have been fighting this notion since the 1980s. On the other hand, the victims of spending cuts are many, diffuse, fractious, and indeterminate. Spending cut fights are like hot potato, where the stronger interest groups rarely hold the potato. The weak and disorganized are the losers of a lose-lose battle, since most of the spending is not wasteful and the waste in the federal budget is fiercely protected by money and political friends in Washington--that's generally how it got there in the first place. (For that matter, tax hike victims can also end up being the most vulnerable and least organized, as was the case when Ronald Reagan "saved Social Security" by hiking up taxes on the poor and middle class so they could pay for the hole that his tax cuts for the rich ripped into the federal budget.) Now, having the president assent to a balanced budget amendment doesn't mean that Democrats (and maybe some Republicans who remember the 2000s) won't band together to block a 2/3 majority, and it certainly doesn't mean that Democrat-dominated states won't band together to block a 3/4 majority, but it gives a intuitive but deeply corrosive idea the imprimatur of respectability. Look at California right now and extrapolate its future. If Obama did that, it would be, hands-down, the worst domestic economic decision of his presidency. Re: Curran The best solution (and only one in your power as a non-Republican) is generally to get a liberal House and Senate elected. That is hard work, and it involves canvassing and organization on the ground, registration of new voters, and a political shop. The president needs to be able to buy into it and at least channel some of the things he was saying during the campaign. This is difficult because he doesn't want to be seen as another partisan up to electioneering games in Washington, but there are various issues on which he can easily castigate the Republicans as supporting what 10 or at best 20% of America wants while he is trying to think about what America will look like after the Republican base is literally dead and buried and we have to live with the sour fruit of their reckless pledges, mandates, and political hacks.

- chaitless

July 17, 2011 at 1:48pm

This piece is a little disappointing and to me shows how the standards of TNR are starting to fall. The Editors here blame the Republicans for this mess. The took over the House 6 months ago and they are to blame? I think the American voters were right when they threw out Pelosi and the Democrats. When the Democrats controlled Govenment they decided Health Care was more important the Economic Reforms. Of course they were cheered on by TNR. Shortly after Obama's election TNR ran this whopper from the Mall in Dec 31, 2008 (Vol 239 Issue 12): 'In fact, we have a magic bullet for short-term spending and long-term saving-- health care reform. During the campaign, skeptics complained that a health care overhaul would involve a lot of upfront costs and that the saving would only come later. But that's exactly what we need right now. Health care involves major spending in the near future, but, more than other initiatives, it will put a brake on federal outlays in the far future.' Looks like TNR was wrong. Admitting you are wrong and starting to change your behavior is an important step towards recovery. Doing the same things over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

- CRS9TNR

July 17, 2011 at 2:04pm

The logic of the situation is getting more and more obvious to many-- if not to CR Most Americans will not believe there is a crisis until there is a crisis. Thanks to 30 years of Reagan-omics indoctrination aided by the media and most-recently no pushback from BHO, most Americans don't believe government does anything right or for them (Medicare is a common, not a rare example). BHO and the Repubs literally need each other to continue their insane pas-de-deux. There is now NO way to avoid an economic crisis-- if BHHO (HH doesn't stand for Herbert Humphrey) gets a debt agreement it will be on his and Repub terms that produce a more severe economic crisis (continued Great Recession or 2nd Great Depression. Conclusion: Pray that the debt talks fail-- and voters blame those responsible: BHHO and the Repubs. The sooner the crisis happen the sooner we may be able to replace those responsible-- and there is still time before the primary season begins. The Hope is smal.. but I dont see a better solution in ANY of the posts above. First Aside: Many of you complain how dumb most voters are.. Compared to what? Politicians?? Pundits?? Press?? Populace of other countries -- 50 million Frenchmen, 65 million Germans, 50 million Japanese, 150 million Russians are never wrong??. Second aside from a pen to be shortly warmed up in Hell: Hopefully Churchill and Twain had it right: Democracy is a terrible form of government, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place.....America always does the right thing-- after it's tried everything else first. Hopefully, that time will shortly come. God especially protects drunks, fools and the United States of America..

- drofnats1

July 17, 2011 at 2:06pm

Of course the Republicans are to blame for this! Although as discussed the Democrats are weak and fractious, that's a fact. But, the problems we're experiencing today trace back at least to the 1980's, with voodoo economics, the failure of American industries to think ahead and to think, moreover, responsibly -for example look at cars and steel. Steel making technologies did not keep pace with innovations embraced by Japan, for example - this wasn't the workers' fault was it. And cars - for heaven's sake look at the unholy alliance between gas guzzlers and the oil industry when all rational signs pointed toward making cars that would sell globally and also protect the environment, cars which people could afford to run that wouldn't destroy the planet. By the same token patriotism is dead when it comes to hiring American workers, better to export the jobs to get cheap workers, bust those pesky unions in the chops and increase "productivity." But the cars - the cars are a classic case. Did Detroit think ahead? Did Detroit think responsibly about the political and economic impact of the petroleum industry around the world, about the need for fuel efficient cars, about the environment? Noooooo. Detroit made SUV's of all things, pretty soon everybody and their local hoodlum was driving a Cadillac Escalade, getting what, 3 mpg? or something and foreign automakers were running off with the dough. So give us a break. This problem long predates the Obama administration and it's more than political, it's industrial and economic; the oligarchs are not going to give up profitable industries even if they destroy entire nations, including this one; and the planet. And, they're employing the ridiculous mantras of the religious right to reinforce their bs, claiming there is no global warming, no environmental damage, no shortage of oil, and the world was made in six days, so there.

- Sophia

July 17, 2011 at 2:16pm

Another poster in a parallel universe: worcestergirl on July 17, 2011 2:10 PM: I found Obama's "if you really care, you will get our fiscal house in order, otherwise all we will be talking about is deficits" [recent]schtick to be extremely galling: 1. "If YOU care"? Who besides liberals actually gives a rat's behind about any of our pressing problems? 2. Spending cuts will hamper "getting our fiscal house in order". He really has drunk the kool-ade. [And he does it repatedly- We really have a Barack Herbert Hoover Obama. HH was also bright, caring, and psychologically/ideologically unfit for his times.] 3. "Otherwise WE will be talking about deficits"? Why are YOU, Obama, ceding control over discourse to Republicans? There is nothing that Obama has taken to the bully pulpit at his disposal. 4. Obama must have serious amnesia. Clinton spent lots of political capital balancing the budget, only to see Republicans win big and blow the surplus on Bush's wealthy buds. I see no reason to see the same thing won't happen again. 5. I know it is the Village's favorite talking point, but everytime I see this implicit "both sides need to give" schtick I know some rediculous false equivilence will follow. This is no exception. Obama has given exactly nothing to the Progressive Caucus and expects them to follow him into what used to be solidly Republican territory. 6. Obama and crew willfully misread the 2010 "shellacking". Moderates like him in the blue dog caucus lost bigtime, the caucus went from 54 to 26. The progeressive caucus lost only about 4 seats. Dems lost becuase elderly voters bought in to the Republican "Obama waants to gut SS/MC" ads, so what does the dang fool do but put SS/MC on the auction block. Jeesh! [BHO's policy and political failures also mproduced the 2010 debacle-- failure to end the filibuster as job1, inadequate stimulus bill, complex and weak and little-understood insurance reform rather than health care reform, BP spill mishandling, weak financial reform, etc., etc.]

- drofnats1

July 17, 2011 at 2:51pm

Go Drof and Sophia! I have no idea what CR's point was, other than that the Healthcare bill's backloading of spending was probably a bad, anti-Keynesian idea in addition to being bad politics.

- Curran1

July 17, 2011 at 5:23pm

What's needed is to redefine what is meant by living within our means. Simply put, the government living within its means means balancing the business-cycle budget, not balancing any individual annual budget. Defining living within our means any other way would be like telling a household that earns half its annual income in one or two months of the year that it should practice austerity during the remaining months to live within its means for those months. With the goal set of balancing the business-cycle budget, the next task should be to define spending and revenue targets as a function of actual GDP, potential GDP and the output gap which could be reasonably forecasted to accomplish the goal and would permit enough spending under current circumstances to get people back to work. Further, doing so would require drilling into the people that surpluses that result from that formula during the boom years are NOT to be "returned" to the people. Rather, they are to pay for the deficits that accumulated during the slowdowns.

- sighthnd

July 17, 2011 at 6:55pm

A little bady need clarification to my previous post. My quote doesn't fully express the TNR Pice as I intended. I forgot to include the headline: 'A Healthy Economy -Medicine is the best stimulus.' I provide a second quote that gets to the Health Care as Stilmulus Point a little clearer: 'The beauty of all this spending is that it will mean higher wages and employment, a more flexible labor market in which people feel free to change jobs or strike out on their own without risking their health and finances, and, yes, less pressure on public and private budgets down the road.' Healtcare is not the Magic Bullet advertised on these pages. And regarding blaming the Republicans, didn't the Democrats raise the Debt Cieling in 2009 & 2010. Including the 2008 Debt Cieling increase under Bush (& the Pelossi Democrats) the Debt Cieling increased by a whopping 35%, in 3 years. An unprecedented increase. The Democrats also knew the Republicans were going to challenge any increase to the Debt Ceiling when they came to power. Not just because of the Tea Party Members, but previous fights over this subject. The President wants a big deal and something he can campaign on. Bipartisian and turning the ship around. But really he wants something that will last about 6 years. Why doesn't the editorial board of the magazine discuss the 35% increase in debt over the last three years, but starts carping about the last six months and a principled atand against taxes?

- CRS9TNR

July 17, 2011 at 8:03pm

You're proposing that Obama actually lead, rather than tailor his politics to the poll-tested opinions of swing voters. Unfortunately, that's not his style.

- mg81992

July 18, 2011 at 2:22am

CRS9TNR: "Why doesn't the editorial board of the magazine discuss the 35% increase in debt over the last three years" Maybe because doing so would have little to do with actually solving our economic problems? The bulk of the increase in the debt is due to the bad economy, tax cuts, and wars, not to new increased domestic discretionary spending. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036 The Editors provide their view on how to improve the economy. I'm not clear as to how pointing out "Gee, the debt is a lot higher now" would change their analysis.

- dsimon

July 18, 2011 at 8:16am

The entire premise of this article is wrong, the reason people aren't working is because we don't need them in the workforce, their skills are wrong and there are only contracting industries left to hire people. The reason is Creative Destruction. a concept "hidden" in the writings of Joseph Schumpeter, the other Austrian economist who unlike Keynes and Hayek actually has an explanation for why it is hard to have full employment in a technologically driven, capitalist society. One simple example, the myth of the US's manufacturing decline would leave one to believe that we don't make anything. The facts show that we are tied with China, their 4x population finally made more stuff than the US after 150 years of chasing the west. The problem is they employed 110 million people to make their items, we made just as much in dollar value as they did with 11 million. This debunks the ideas of tax cuts or government stimulus from creating jobs, the paradox is that the more modern businesses invest the less people they need to hire.

- jstafura

July 18, 2011 at 2:59pm

The next to last sentence of the article identifies the problem--government spending must increase. But unless I'm missing something, no one seems to have the answer to the question of how spending can be increased now given that the troglodytic Republicans control the House, hence the budget.

- ballston

July 18, 2011 at 5:01pm

DSimon - My Point on discussing a 35% increase in the Debt Ceiling is more about sharing the blame and does help solve the economic problems in my mind. Remember the Pelosi Democrats raised the Debt Cieling twice in 2009 for a $ 800 Million, and then a $ 2 Billion Whopper three months later in February of 2010. At the time the Republicnas told the Democrats that their Budget assumptions were too rosy and they were playing fast and loose with the accounting assumptions. Democrats told the Republicans that this was CBO Accounting rules and they would spend the money. Had the Democrats been more realistic and conservative in their revenue and spending assumptions, they would have raised the Debt Ceiliing higher, or cut spending/raised revenue to make the books balance. But they didn't. The Democrats left the problems for the next congress to deal with. A realistic look at the past helps understand the current conditions. The Republicans know the Democrats decided to spend and hope, and it didn't work. TNR is not doing anyone any favors by blaming the Republicans for this issue, and they could be giving the Democrats false hope that the 'Media & Public' will blame the Republicans. I remember when TNR was a Middle of the Road publication that prided itself on thoughtful analyis and evenhanded opinion. As TNR moves ever leftward they should consider publishing in Newsprint and asking for reader donations like 'The Nation'. TNR is tilting so far left that they are beginning to be ignored by serious readers.

- CRS9TNR

July 18, 2011 at 8:29pm

It is enormously frustrating at the ineptitude of those in power, everybody but everybody. Not only the politicians, but the major companies. They have one third of our population in the dumps. At the end of the day this so unfair, that something will have to happen to punish the evil humans that are doing nothing, but really nothing to help our able suffering men and women. When we reach this point of total breakup, and the inept Washington powerful wasting time on shenanigans the people have to rise to get their rights fulfilled . This mediocrity, this explotatiin, this misuse of our tax dollars will be stopped I fully assure you, I kid you not.

- JAIMECHUCH

July 18, 2011 at 10:58pm

CRS9TNR: "Had the Democrats been more realistic and conservative in their revenue and spending assumptions, they would have raised the Debt Ceiliing higher, or cut spending/raised revenue to make the books balance. But they didn't. The Democrats left the problems for the next congress to deal with." I could argue about that, or not, but I still don't see how it would affect the analysis of how to create more jobs. Regardless of the debt ceiling, Keynsian economics either works or it doesn't. So discussing who his responsible for the debt, or for raising the debt ceiling, is a distinct issue, and it doesn't make sense for the TNR editors to bring it up in this context.

- dsimon

July 19, 2011 at 11:20am