kalikshama
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Why voters don't blame Obama for low growth - and prefer spending to cuts.
One of the most amazing things about this election season is that the weak economy hasn't been more of a liability for President Obama. Historically, it's unprecedented. If you look at the Conference Board's consumer-confidence index, which since its inception in 1967 has perfectly predicted presidential elections, you'll see that every time the index is below 95, the incumbent loses. Today's confidence number is around 66, which is very low by any standard. (When Jimmy Carter lost, it was 74!) Yet the President continues to lead in many polls, even when it comes to the economy. In a Pew poll conducted in July, 48% of voters believed the President would do a better job of improving economic conditions, whereas Mitt Romney scored just 42%.
Clearly, times have changed since Ronald Reagan was able to topple Carter by simply asking, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The global economy has become a lot more complex since 1980, and so has voters' understanding of it. People pay attention to the financial press, and they know that many of the headwinds facing our economy aren't due to any particular Obama policy but to problems abroad--the disaster that is Europe and the slowdown in emerging markets that hits exporters in the U.S. You can see this new understanding in the polls; most people don't think the economy is going to get a lot better anytime soon, no matter who's in charge.
Not only have voters gotten wise to the fact that the global economy is a spaghetti bowl of problems that can't be handled by any one person, but they also understand that our core troubles go deeper and are more structural than in the past. When asked about the most important economic challenges facing the country, voters will often cite the shrinking middle class and all the issues that go along with it, like stubbornly high unemployment and lower wages across a broad variety of white and blue collar jobs.
On that score, Obama wins points: far more people think his policies will help the middle class than feel that way about Romney's. The GOP nominee's pick of Paul Ryan as running mate was clearly an attempt to address the middle-class problem. But Ryan's extreme deficit-cutting plan overshadows any bootstrapping, laissez-faire success mythology he might represent. Most of his cuts would come at the expense of the poor and the middle class, something the Obama team is going to great pains to publicize.
Meanwhile, Romney's 13% problem, which is part and parcel of his middle-class problem, isn't going away. His pathetically low income tax rate is perfectly legal. And that's the issue: it just doesn't seem fair to most people, including a lot of rich ones--not only Warren Buffett but also many other older financiers and executives who had no problem making their money and building their businesses when tax rates were vastly higher than they are now. Americans are much more likely than, say, Europeans to tolerate high levels of income inequality. But in counting on American voters' aspirational nature, Romney made an important miscalculation. People are willing to tolerate this inequality only when they feel the system isn't rigged against them. And everything about Romney--from the $77,000 tax write-off for his wife's half-million-dollar show horse to his complicated Cayman Islands accounts--makes it seem that it is. Even a buff, Atlas Shrugged--toting Ryan can't change that belief.
Americans simply don't buy into supply-side economics anymore. An April CBS News/New York Times poll found that when it comes to deciding the best way to promote economic growth, most Americans prefer spending more on education and infrastructure while raising taxes on the wealthy and businesses to pay for it (56%), while fewer than half favor lowering taxes and cutting government spending (37%). Americans overwhelmingly want the government--the government!--to do more to help the financial situation of the middle class, and that desire cuts across party lines.
I suspect that's one reason a Financial Times/Economist Global Business Barometer survey found that twice as many business executives worldwide think it would be better for the global economy if Obama remained President. The trend even held in the U.S. (albeit by a much smaller margin) despite the Administration's loss of support from Wall Streeters who don't want to be (re)regulated.
It's not surprising. CEOs look across the Atlantic and see austerity as a failed policy in Europe. A reading of economic history tells them that although tax cuts have never led to a growth boom, government spending on smart things like infrastructure and education has. Voters seem to have treated Obama's first-term economy as a write-off--like the Romneys' horse. They're more interested in the future. That's why Obama may still have one.
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Curious about the "Sluts Vote" avatars? See http://www.collarchat.com/m_4133036/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#4133036
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