Sometimes I worry that my readers will get a kind of whiplash as I alternate between alarmist and optimistic messages. The truth is, though, that I am both alarmed and optimistic. As I’ve said, I think we have the better candidates and the better argument. At the same time, I can read polls, and they’re terrible. The outcome of the midterms is in real doubt. But one thing that needs to change, and change quickly, is the insane situation that allows Bush’s budget director and trade representative to be polling well in Ohio and for the GOP to be surging in Michigan.
The people of Michigan should be naming their children and schools after the president because he saved their entire way of life by bailing out General Motors and Chrysler at a time when the GOP wanted to destroy them and their powerful unions. Remember the debate?
Senator Bob Corker, a leading critic of the companies who has said they should file for bankruptcy, said Wednesday that G.M. was simply seeking to replace bondholder debt with government loans, which would leave it in no better shape.
“How much better off is the capital structure of G.M. when another $30 billion of public lending supplants that private debt?” Mr. Corker, Republican of Tennessee, said in an interview.
How’d that prediction work out?
General Motors took the first formal steps on Wednesday to once again sell shares publicly, highlighting a remarkable turnaround for the corporate giant a year after its bankruptcy and setting the stage for Washington to withdraw from its majority ownership stake in the automaker.
Meanwhile, the people of Ohio’s standard of living was decimated by Rob Portman’s economic and trade policies. They might as well elect their own hangman as vote for a guy like Portman.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Ohio had 209,400 fewer nonfarm jobs in December 2007 than it had in December 2000. This loss of 3.7 percent of Ohio’s jobs is the worst seven-year loss in state records that begin in 1939 as the Great Depression was ending.
And that was before the Great Recession hit. Now?
From December 2008 to December 2009, more than 255,000 Ohio jobs disappeared, according to revised, seasonally adjusted numbers. The state now has a bit fewer than 5 million jobs.
Ohio had most recently had fewer than 5 million workers in 1993. That signals almost two lost decades for job growth in the state. Since the state’s monthly jobs number peaked in the spring of 2000 at 5.64 million, Ohio has lost 11.3 percent of its jobs, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
“It’s appalling,” Newton said. “This is not something that’s going to turn around quickly.”
Rob Portman for Ohio? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Now, the Democrats are going to make these arguments, but it’s long past time for the Democrats and progressives in the blogosphere to turn their attention toward assisting them. We’re whatever exists in the way of paltry left-wing media in this country. Too many of us have our eyes off the ball. It’s one thing to lose seats in the South or conservative exurbs. But to have people in Ohio and Michigan turning to the GOP? That’s unacceptable. We’ve got to beat this back.
