Essay: Unemployment Benefits - 4/18/2008

For the last six weeks, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been desperately bashing each other over what seem to be progressively more silly non-issues. The latest of these features Clinton’s claim that Obama had somehow insulted working-class America, when he said it wasn’t surprising that they were getting “bitter” about the frustrating economic conditions.

The tempest that followed totally puzzled me. Virtually all the working-class and even middle-class people I know ARE somewhat bitter about the economy, even if they haven’t lost their job.

So what’s to like about $3.50 a gallon gas, and not being able to sell your house if your life depended on it?

But the Clintons and the media acted as if Obama had embraced al-Qaeda.

But the voters seem to have more sense than the pundits. Yesterday, a new Zogby poll in Pennsylvania showed that 60 percent of the voters agreed with Obama. They are bitter! Things aren’t good. And though Democrats have been slipping in the polls lately, in Pennsylvania, both contenders still lead John McCain.

And that may give you some insight into why normally party-line Republicans like Thaddeus McCotter have parted company with the Bush Administration on the unemployment bill.

Some of this happens in every administration. Presidents progressively lose power and influence, as the clock counts down in the last months of their final term. But this is a special case.

George W. Bush and his policies have been intensely unpopular for some time, and the country is now headed into a recession. This fact is going to be the single greatest economic hurdle John McCain has to overcome if he is going to be elected.

Six months from now, there are going to be two nominees, and if the race comes down to a referendum on the economy, the Democratic presidential nominee will win, whoever it is.

Michigan rejected President Bush four years ago, largely for economic reasons, and things were a lot better then. Thaddeus McCotter knows this, and he knows he is not invulnerable.

This fall, he has to run for a fourth term. He is the youngest and least-well-known Republican congressman in the state. He will be favored to win, but as the Almanac of American Politics notes, he could be vulnerable to a well-funded, top-tier Democratic opponent.

He was lucky two years ago; his opponent had almost no money, and unlike some other challengers. didn’t seem to work very hard. But McCotter got only 54 percent, his lowest showing ever.

That doesn’t mean that McCotter isn’t sincere about wanting to help unemployed workers. But as the entertaining and colorful Speaker of the House Tip O‘Neill used to say, all politics is local.

And this fall, smart local politics are going to mean opposing the Bush Administration’s economic policies. If the President vetoes extending unemployment compensation, you can bet you’ll see it on YouTube and TV commercials, right up till election day.

And the Democrats are counting on those images driving any memory of the Reverend Wright videos right off the charts.

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Comments

[Anonymous]

I don't presume that "Obama ha[s] embraced al Qaeda" as Mr. Lessenberry sarcastically posits. But it is a remarkably ironic statement, coming as it does in the same week that a leader of the Iranian-backed international terrorist group Hamas endorsed Obama.

Is it just me, or is the thesis of this short commentary by Mr. Lessneberry is that the Democrat nominee "should" or "must" win Michigan in November? Anyone who has been reading Mr. Lessenberry's commentaries knows that he is an ardent supporter of higher taxes, more discretionary governmental spending and a campaigner for Democrats at the state and federal level. And, a bitter opponent of President Bush, dating back to before the 200 election.

"Bittergate" has hurt Obama, and for reasons that Mr. Lessenberry either does not understand or does not want to understand. (Obama didn't just say that working class Americans were bitter about the economy. Obama said that middle Americans' belief in traditional conservative Christian values and responsible gun ownership was somehow not the product of considered values, but due to ignorance and bitterness.) If working class Americans bristle at higher fuel and commodity prices, it is not without reason or understanding. Americans would rightfully be angered at the "tax" that mideast instability and terrorism place on world oil prices. With high oil prices, we ought to be exploring more sources of domestic crude. We ought to be encouraging better and more refining capacity.

The Democrats promise to let the Bush tax cuts expire. Obama would drastically increase capital gains taxes, and no Democrat seems seriously willing to adjust the Altenative Minimum Tax that was enacted in the early 70's as a "millionaires' tax" but is now ensnaring mid-level wage earners in high income states like Michigan.

Whoever the Democrat nominee is, he or she will desperately need Michigan. But with a failed lame duck Democrat governor, a Detroit mayor awaiting a felony trial, a thoroughly divided Democratic electorate and a Republican nominee who won this state against the odds in 2000, Michigan could be a cornerstone in a 2008 Republican victory.

[Jack Lessenberry]

Of course it will, sweetheart