As we saw in the last election, people vote with their pocketbooks. Democrats won big because the economy was in tatters and they didn’t trust Republicans to make things better. But hopes for a quick recovery have largely vanished and Democrats may be just as likely to feel voters’ wrath if unemployment keeps hovering at 10% or higher (and most economists seem to think that’s pretty likely until well into next year). To put current job losses into perspective, take a look at the chart below:
The solid red line shows job losses for the current recession that began in 2007. The dotted red line shows what job losses will really look like once the Department of Labor updates its statistics. Our country faces the gargantuan task of replacing eight million jobs and counting. Liberal economists may have been right when they argued that the stimulus package should have been larger, but passing another stimulus just isn’t going to happen–not after the Democrats move heaven and earth to pass a health care bill. There are other ways for the feds to create jobs, as Robert Reich points out, but I’m not sure any silver bullet exists to get people back to work other than a gradual restructuring of the economy. A lot can happen between now and next November, but Democrats need to put their collective shoulder to the wheel and give voters concrete reasons to believe they will be better off with a continued Democratic majority. Otherwise, the Know-Nothings (a more accurate appellation for the remnants of the GOP) will be swept back into power on waves of demagoguery and fear.
