Spread this YouTube video by clammyc — everywhere. The more people who see it the better.
Clammy’s video reflects this comment (corrected for grammatical errors) I made in an earlier story of mine this week:
Really, all I want is for the Dems to start playing offense.
A national ad showing how Bush’s tax policies drove us into a ditch would go a long way toward that goal. I’d flood the country with 15 or 30 second ads showing “8 years of Democratic policies – X million net jobs created vs. 8 years of Republican policies – X million net jobs lost.”
Then follow that with “Eight years of Republicans – Average Americans incomes lost $2000 under Republican policies while the rich got even wealthier.”
Then “Under Republican health care policies X million of people lost their health care or saw huge health care increases, or were denied coverage by health insurance companies and millions of those people were forced into bankruptcy.”
I’d then follow that by pointing out “Under Republican oversight of banks, Wall Street and mortgage lenders the housing market which had been artificially inflated collapsed and millions lost their homes and jobs because Bush and the Republicans let Wall Street run wild speculating on the value of our homes.”
One last commercial would be “Republicans in the Senate spent the last two years filibustering to prevent or delay votes against anything proposed by Democrats that would help the economy — even tax cuts and credits for small businesses and unemployment insurance benefits.”
Then I’d end each commercial by saying that “Republicans if re-elected will turn back the clock to unleash Wall Street on us again, repeal health care reform, send more jobs overseas, cut more taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes for social security and Medicare or seek to outright eliminate them.”
The final part of each commercial would be this: “Can we afford to give Republicans control of Government again when all they will pursue the same old failed policies that destroyed the middle class and helped only their fat cat friends?”
In short, it is time for Democrats to go on the attack. For example, did you know that Republicans stand for policies that created fewer jobs per year in eight years under Ronald Reagan than were created under 4 years of Jimmy Carter? Yes, that Jimmy Carter, the Democrat Republicans love to mock as the worst President in the Modern era was better at job creation than the fabled, legendary St. Ronald of Supply Side Economics (of course Republicans conveniently forget Reagan raised taxes more than he cut them and he pumped billions of dollars into defense spending which primed the Keynesian economic pump, which is likely why his job creation numbers outdid George W. Bush but that’s another story).
In fact, go to the chart compiled by the Wall Street Journal on Job Creation and you will find that in each eight year period when Democrats controlled the White House since Harry Truman more jobs were created than in the succeeding eight year terms of Republican Presidents. Of the two instances where a Democrat and Republican only ruled for 4 years as President (Carter and Bush the Elder) Carter cleaned Bush the First’s clock with 2.6 MILLION jobs per year for Carter versus 625,000 per year for Bush I.
And leading the way (or trailing the pack if you like) with the fewest jobs created per year and overall was George W. Bush: 375,000 jobs created per year. That was the worst record of job creation, by the way, since the Government started keeping statistics.
It should come as no surprise that George W. Bush’s party had complete control of Congress for most of his two terms, and that he and his party passed the largest tax cuts in history. Tax cuts, combined with Republican spending and corruption (how much money did private US contractors in Iraq like Halliburton and KBR and Blackwater waste or steal from the US government?) created the largest sustained increase in the National Debt. Not to mention he left a steaming pile of economic disaster across the country when he exited the White House in January 2009.
While some Republicans have blamed high unemployment on Obama’s “stimulus” the truth is that most of the job losses can be laid at the feet of Bush and the Republicans whose policies led to the Housing Bubble and its inevitable collapse in 2007-2008:
From December 2007 to July 2009 – the last year of the Bush second term and the first six months of the Obama presidency, before his policies could affect the economy – private sector employment crashed from 115,574,000 jobs to 107,778,000 jobs. Employment continued to fall, however, for the next six months, reaching a low of 107,107,000 jobs in December of 2009. So, out of 8,467,000 private sector jobs lost in this dismal cycle, 7,796,000 of those jobs or 92 percent were lost on the Republicans’ watch or under the sway of their policies. Some 671,000 additional jobs were lost as the stimulus and other moves by the administration kicked in, but 630,000 jobs then came back in the following six months. The tally, to date: Mr. Obama can be held accountable for the net loss of 41,000 jobs (671,000 – 630,000), while the Republicans should be held responsible for the net losses of 7,796,000 jobs.
So, when some of those GOP candidates change the subject from unemployment to treacherous immigrants, they actually may know precisely what they’re doing.
So, spread the video as everywhere as you can. And those of you with mad video skilz should make your own which we can also help to propagate. I hope the DNC and the DCCC and DSCC are working to prepare similar vids and ads, but in case they are not, we shouldn’t wait. Because if Republicans recapture even one House of Congress it would be a disaster for our country.
Republican ideas were tried, and the country nearly died, and many individuals caught up in the economic tsunami the GOP policies created did die as this story from yesterday at Dkos shows. One story out of millions of untold stories. Real heartbreak, real misery, real lives ruined: that is the GOP legacy. Never again.
Never again, but only if we all do what we can to keep the crazy idiots like Bachman, and Issa, and Rand and Angle, ad infinitum from gaining power.