At AFL-CIO Now, editor Tula Connell addresses a central question of the 2012 campaign, “Republican or Democratic President? Which Is Better for Your Pocketbook?” with some facts Dems would be smart to master in the weeks ahead. In her review of a new book, “Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box: How the Performance of Our Presidents Has Impacted Your Wallet” by Bob Deitrick and Lew Goldfarb, Connell explains:

Let’s say you had $100,000 in a 401(k) account in 1993, at the beginning of President Clinton’s eight years in office, and had withdrawn it in 2001 when he left. You would have amassed $341,894. If you invested the same amount in 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, and withdrawn it eight years later, you actually would have lost money, holding only $64,990…a difference of $277,000 between the two presidential terms.

The book was obviously published before President Obama finished his first term. But it does include evaluations for the last 13 presidents, with their criteria explained. You can see evaluations for each one by clicking on the widget at the top of this webpage. Further, adds Connell:

Topping the list for boosting the nation’s finances under this ranking are John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson–combined because Kennedy did not finish his term. Second place is a tie between Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. The highest-ranking Republican is Dwight Eisenhower, who created the national (read: federal government-funded) interstate system, Goldfarb said. The lowest of all: Hoover.

Although unemployment statistics, especially the monthly rate, get ample media coverage and attention from voters, the authors believe smart voters should pay attention to other indicators. As Connell quotes Deitrick and Goldfarb,

We believe that readers need to understand that whom they decide to vote for is very important to their personal bottom line, to their net worth and to their retirement and children’s education. We believe that Americans should consider voting for the economic wallet, for their IRA, their 401(k), their 403(b) plan and their kids’ 529 plan as well.

In addition to voters, presidential candidates and their advisers may benefit from the book’s “Presidential Rules for Economic Success (PRES Rules),” which the authors developed from the policies of the more successful of the 13 presidents.

Laura Clawson has a barbed riff on Paul Ryan’s ‘voice of the common man’ pretensions up at Alternet. Here’s a taste:

Only with Mitt Romney as the presidential nominee could you have a ticket in which a guy who was elected to Congress at 28 after working on the Hill for several years was tapped to play the role of the Everyman Who Understands You Commoners.

Clawson then quotes from a recent Ryan speech in which he gibbers on about his “flippin’ burgers at McDonald’s” and “…standing in front of that big Hobart machine washing dishes or waiting tables,” and then waxes all Ayn Randy about “I’m the American dream on a path and journey so that I can find happiness however I can find it myself,” whatever that means.
To which Clawson adds,

That is some optimistic, forward-looking, Grade-A American Dream bullshit right there. Because again, Paul Ryan’s stints at service work came between high school and the year or two immediately out of college, and in that year or two immediately out of college, he was already working on the Hill…But one thing he definitely didn’t learn from low-wage work was what it’s like to face a lifetime of low-wage work, what it’s like to try to build a life and support a family while working at McDonald’s. Ryan was already trying his damnedest to injure the people living those lives by raising their taxes and shredding the safety net. Now he’s adding insult to that injury, insulting his audiences and the people struggling to get by–to pay all their bills and raise their kids, with no marketing job or House seat on the horizon–by pretending he knows any of that.

Ryan is apparently clueless that his ‘regular guy’ proclamations invite ridicule, though soon to be overshadowed by Romney’s reported image makeover for the Tampa convention.

The following is cross-posted from an e-blast from workingamerica.org:
It Just Makes Sense: Bring Jobs Home
We can connect jobs and tax fairness thanks to introduction of the Bring Jobs Home Act–and the Republican filibuster that blocked it.
Our members understand the basic unfairness of tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. For them, outsourcing is a critical and emotional issue.

· People appreciate a realistic, nuanced conversation. In Pennsylvania, we’re finding that 4 to 5 people each night ask if we think outsourcing can really be addressed. For people who are skeptical, it’s really helpful to describe the Bring Jobs Home Act as “a step in the right direction” rather than a simple, perfect solution.
· Many people are surprised and angry that their Senators wouldn’t vote for the Bring Jobs Home Act. One Wisconsin member described it as “a no-brainer.”
· When we note that there are tax incentives to ship jobs overseas today, and that the bill would use our tax dollars to keep jobs here instead, that gets a positive response, and the personal connection of the issue to their lives help distinguish our conversation from the usual platitudes of a political campaign.
· Retirees are identifying good jobs as a top issue because they’re worried about their children and grandchildren, because the kind of stable, secure jobs that supported them are harder than ever to find. They respond strongly to the issue of outsourcing–often with stories of people in their family having trouble finding work.

People connect to this issue on a gut level

· Stephanie, a member in High Point, N.C., explained that she worked for a credit card company call center, where employees started getting sent to other locations–even as far away as New Delhi–to run trainings. “The company executives marketed this training opportunity as a vacation,” Stephanie told us. “But they were really training their replacements. Soon after, the Greensboro call center was closed down…companies outsource jobs for cheaper labor.” Stephanie felt betrayed–angry, frustrated and demoralized over the loss of her job and the disrespect from her employer.
· Another new member in Sheboygan, Wisconsin said that, while he has worked at the same factory for 15 years, he’s seen three co-workers’ jobs get outsourced in the last year. “He worries every day that he’ll be next,” our organizer Michelle said.
· Two separate members in Beaver County, Pennsylvania brought up the example of a local steel mill bought and dismantled by an out-of-state company. Interestingly, both independently compared that mill closure to Bain Capital.

Ending the Bush Tax Cuts for the Richest

The idea that the richest 2 percent should pay their fair share is resonating, as well. We find very wide agreement with ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest.
· We’ve had success pulling together the Bush tax cuts and the Bring Jobs Home Act as part of a single message about tax fairness. People agree that corporations and the richest 2 percent aren’t paying their fair share, and working people are suffering the consequences.
· A small handful of people–a few people each night–disagree with the idea of ending the Bush tax cuts on the richest 2 percent, usually using some variation of the “job creator” \talking point.
· The most effective response to this is to point out the CEOs of big corporations like Verizon and GE aren’t paying their fair share in taxes and aren’t creating jobs.

“If it wasn’t for the middle class, the economy wouldn’t work,” is very effective language when making the case for ending the top-level Bush tax cuts.
Karen Nussbaum, Executive Director
Working America

Ed Kilgore’s “Mitt Digs in Deeper” at the Washington Monthly asks a good question about Romney’s declaration that he hasn’t paid less than 13 percent of his income in taxes:

I mean, 13% is not a high rate for a guy with Mitt’s wealth; certainly nothing approaching the allegedly confiscatory rates the poor job-creators of America are toiling under, making them wonder each and every day if it’s time to Go Gault. And the number raises the rather obvious question: 13% of what? Total income? Adjusted Gross Income? Taxable income? Ezra Klein suggests it may be that last measurement, which may be the only one under which he can claim a double-digit tax burden.

It’s a curiously inept media strategy. As Kilgore adds, Romney would probably be better off with a “none of your damn business” approach. Instead, “his drip-drip-drip of undocumented assertions raises a lot more questions than it answers.”
President Obama and Vice President Biden have released 12 and 14 years, respectively, of their tax forms. Romney can evade and jabber all he wants. But smart voters won’t be satisfied until he shows an equal commitment to openness and transparency.

WaPo opinion writer Dana Milbank has a perceptive take on the tone of the 2012 presidential campaign. Milbank quotes WaPo’s Dan Balz and other sources commenting on the toxicity of the campaign, but then adds that one major thing is indeed very different:

…Democrats are now employing harsh tactics that have been used against them for so long…Yes, it’s ugly out there. But is this worse than four years ago, when Obama was accused by the GOP vice presidential nominee of “palling around with terrorists”? Or eight years ago, when Democratic nominee John Kerry was accused of falsifying his Vietnam War record?
What’s different this time is that the Democrats are employing the same harsh tactics that have been used against them for so long, with so much success. They have ceased their traditional response of assuming the fetal position when attacked, and Obama’s campaign is giving as good as it gets — and then some.
Balz is correct when he observes that the “most striking” element of the campaign is “the sense that all restraints are gone, the guardrails have disappeared and there is no incentive for anyone to hold back.” In large part, this is because the Democrats are no longer simply whining about the other side being reckless and unfair:

And that’s all to the good — and long-overdue.

Looks like the GOP has dredged up a new ‘swift boat’-style attack ad to belittle President Obama’s leadership in the raid that did what the Republicans failed to do under nearly 8 years of their ‘leadership’ — find and kill bin Laden. As Juliet Lapidos explains in “Return of the Swift Boat” at the New York Times ‘Taking Note’ Editor’s Blog:

…A new group with ties to the G.O.P and the Tea Party called Special Operations Opsec Education Fund has released a 22-minute video rebuking the president for “politically capitalizing” on national security operations, like the raid that killed Bin Laden.
Anyone who watched the late-night address in which Mr. Obama announced bin Laden’s death will remember that he praised the “tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals” and the “years of painstaking work by our intelligence community.” The Opsec video includes a clip of that address, but omits the “heroic work” and “painstaking work” lines so that it seems as though Mr. Obama gave himself undue credit. Cue Dave Lamorte, a retired C.I.A. officer, who says: “The administration didn’t capture, or kill or eliminate bin Laden or anybody else. There’s a whole lot of folks in the intelligence and the military community who have been working on this for a very long time.” Then Ben Smith, a former Navy SEAL, chimes in with his best Don LaFontaine impression: “Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden. America did.”

But the military leader who was actually involved with with the raid strongly disagrees with Lamorte. As Scott Shane notes in his New York Times Report,

In a CNN interview last month, Adm. William H. McRaven of the Navy, who oversaw the raid as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, said, “The president and his national security team — I’m not a political guy, but I will tell you as, as an interested observer in this — they were magnificent in how they handled it start to finish.”

As Lapidos eloquently sums up the new swift boat attack ad:

It’s a dishonest hatchet job that’ll make you long for a shower, especially since the “stars” of the video present themselves as concerned citizens with no partisan motivations. “We have become a political weapon. We are not. Our job is to be silent professionals. We do not seek recognition; we do not seek popularity,” says Mr. Smith, evidently unaware that appearing in a long attack ad doesn’t gel with his claims.

Better make that two showers.

Greg Sargent blogs at WaPo’s The Plum Line on Mitt Romney’s unverified statement today stating that he never paid less than 13 percent taxes over the last decade. As Sargent explains:

What we’re looking at here is an extraordinary gamble by the Romney camp — call it the “just trust me” campaign. In essence, Romney is betting he can withhold huge amounts of detail about his finances and his major policy proposals without the public knowing or caring about it enough to matter.
On taxes, this lack of transparency goes beyond the amounts he paid; tax experts think the returns could shed light on Romney’s various offshore accounts and any techniques — fully legal, but perhaps difficult to explain politically — he used to keep his rates low. Romney has stuck to this stance even though multiple Republicans, including his longtime backer and fundraiser Jon Huntsman Sr., have called on him to come clean with the American people.
That’s only the begining. Romney won’t reveal the names of his major bundlers, even though he’s taken a drubbing from major editorial boards for failing to do so…

The lack of transparency and candor is not just regarding his personal finances; It’s also his policies that he keeps deliberately vague:

…Romney has claimed he wants to eliminate whole government programs and agencies, but has freely admitted he won’t specify which ones, because so doing could be political problematic. Romney did let a bit of detail slip about which programs and agencies he’d consolidate or eliminate, but only in a closed-door fundraiser that was overheard by reporters.
Romney has proposed a tax overhaul that he vows will be revenue neutral, but he won’t say which loopholes and deductions he’d close to ensure that his plan’s deep tax cuts on the rich will be paid for without hiking the middle class’s tax burden. And not only that, but Romney and his running mate have freely confirmed in interviews that they see no need to reveal these details until after the election — after which, they claim, it can all be worked out with Congress. And so on.

As for the strategy behind Romney’s evasions, Sargent adds, “Romney appears to be betting that he can muddle his way through to victory despite the merciless incoming he continues to take, because voters disillusioned by the bad economy will want an alternative so badly that they won’t be too picky about the details…Romney is betting on media incompetence — its inability to inform the public — or on voter apathy, or on a combination of both, to allow him to skate through.”
It’s a cynical ploy, one that assumes an extraordinary degree of apathy, dim-wittedness or distraction among voters. America’s hopes for a better future depend in no small measure on him being wrong.

To help cut through the thickening smokescreen the Romney-Ryan team is puffing up around their unpopular tax policies, Mike Lofgren’s “Romney and Ryan’s Phony Deficit-Reduction Plan” at The Daily Beast has a nut graph that simplifies it:

It is not just that he cuts taxes, it is how Ryan cuts taxes that gives us a clue as to the Republican agenda. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that under his plan, those making less than the princely sum of $20,000 a year would have an average tax increase of $193 annually, while those earning more than $1 million would reap an average tax cut of $265,000. When, under the Bush administration, the capital gains rate was lowered to 15 percent, it not only exacerbated the growing income disparity in America (many of the rich earn most if not all of their wealth from capital gains: that is why Romney pays an effective rate of less than 14 percent). The capital-gains rate cut also helped fuel the asset bubble that led to the greatest financial collapse in 80 years. Ryan’s budget would eliminate the capital-gains tax altogether. But, since we must all tighten our belts, he proposes to help offset the revenue loss by eliminating the child tax credit!

As Lofgren observes, “Republicans’ caterwauling about deficits and debt is eyewash to gull the public into believing they are serious fiscal stewards. Their rhetoric is intended to camouflage their real objective, which is to slash taxes for their wealthy contributors.”

The following article, by Andrew Baumann and Erica Seifert, vice president and senior associate, respectively of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, is cross-posted from Politico:
Mitt Romney’s presidential team is touting Rep. Paul Ryan’s selection as the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate as a game changer. They may be right — but not in the way they’re hoping.
There are certainly benefits to Romney’s selection of Ryan. He not only consolidates but also electrifies a base that continues to have serious doubts about their presumed presidential nominee. Ryan will likely bring a boost to Romney’s already overflowing campaign coffers. He’s also a capable spokesperson for conservative economic policies.
But the risks for Romney are enormous. And the fact that the former Massachusetts governor is willing to take those risks shows that the Romney brain trust realizes that their recent dip in the polls is real.
Ryan begins this new chapter relatively unknown (54 percent have never heard of him in a recent CNN poll) and the voters who do know him are split — even in his home state of Wisconsin. He had a 36 – 29 percent favorable/unfavorable ratio in a recent Marquette University poll.
The impact of vice presidential nominees on the Electoral College is always overrated, and Ryan will likely be no exception. A recent analysis by Nate Silver in The New York Times estimated that Ryan’s addition to the ticket would add only a net 0.7 points to Romney’s margin in Wisconsin, hardly enough to swing the state.
Of course, the Ryan pick matters far more on a strategic, rather than tactical, level. Republicans have insisted from the beginning that this election would be a referendum on President Barack Obama’s economic record. Obama and his team have done their best to turn it into a choice between two governing philosophies: one holding that “the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class,” as Obama says in a recent campaign ad, and one that would sacrifice the middle class and its priorities in favor of more giveaways to the very wealthy and special interests.
The Romney camp’s selection of Ryan is an admission that their efforts to make this a referendum have failed. It also ensures that Ryan’s unpopular budget plan will be a focus of the campaign – to Obama’s advantage.
Obama and Democrats have been trying to hang Ryan’s plan around the necks of Republicans since it first passed the House in April 2011. And with good reason. Americans opposed Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program 58 to 35 percent, according to a CNN poll in May 2011. Our own research over the last year and half for Democracy Corps has found that the Ryan plan has only become less popular.
Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare remains the most unpopular portion of his budget plan, raising serious doubts in the mind of two-thirds of voters in our April national survey.
But it’s hardly the only unpopular element. Voters also reject Ryan’s plan to cut taxes for the very wealthy while raising them on the poor and middle class; his plan to allow the refundable child tax credit to expire, which would push the families of 2 million children back into poverty; and to his drastic cuts to education spending. All these create serious doubts with at least 59 percent of likely voters, and very serious doubts with between 37 and 40 percent of likely voters (a strong intensity score).
They are even more potent with key swing groups (independents, suburban voters and seniors), as well as Democratic base voters (Latinos, youth and unmarried women) who have yet to become energized in this election.
While the individual elements of Ryan’s plan are deeply unpopular, the biggest effect on the campaign may well be how it helps Obama’s argument that Romney has the wrong priorities for middle class Americans. Obama has already been using Romney’s history at Bain Capital, plus the recent Tax Policy Center report on Romney’s tax plan, to argue that “Romney Hood” policies would rob the middle class to help the wealthy.
Swing voters expressed these same sentiments when we described the Ryan plan to them (in neutral language) in recent focus groups. One non-college, independent woman from Columbus. Ohio said:
“It’s just wrong, in my opinion…I think of Robin Hood, where the king is stealing from the poor to make more money.”
The Ryan budget’s impact on Romney at the ballot box will be very real. In our June national survey (before Obama’s recent surge in national polling), after voters heard a favorable description of the Ryan plan (paraphrased from Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) as well as balanced arguments for and against the budget, we asked them to imagine a debate in which Romney embraced Ryan’s plan while Obama opposed it.
The vote shifted significantly, with Obama’s lead more than doubling from 3 to 8 points (51 to 43 percent). Among critical independent voters, Obama’s margin expanded from 2 to 11 points.
Voters no longer have to imagine a Romney embrace of the Ryan budget. This weekend, Romney made Ryan’s priorities his own.

The following article by Democratic Stategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
I can’t think of any other VP pick in history who has ever made the activists on both sides of the political divide so immediately ecstatic. Most VP picks are snoozers picked to balance the ticket geographically or demographically. Some are unknowns like Palin was last time, and/or like Palin and Quayle quickly become seen as duds that weigh down the ticket. But the Ryan pick instantly electrifies and clarifies the political dynamic for both movement conservatives and movement progressives. It is the dream ticket for both sides- but in the end I think it will be a dream for us Democrats and a nightmare for the Republicans.
At the top of the ticket you have Mr. 1%, the Wall Street tycoon poster child whose brutal brand of corporate ethics made him wealthy beyond his dreams while laying off workers, cutting benefits, pioneering out-sourcing, and bankrupting companies. And as his number 2, you have the ultimate cheerleader and intellectual wunderkind for this style of Ayn Randian capitalism. Paul Ryan, whose open worship of Rand (his inspiration for getting into politics) will be a major discussion in this campaign, crafted the ultimate budget document for rewarding the Romneys of the world and punishing everyone else, and Romney rewarded him with the VP pick.
Romney’s strategy will be to use Ryan to try and make this campaign about the federal debt, but don’t be fooled: the Ryan budget doesn’t project actually balancing the budget until 2040, and then only with wildly optimistic economic growth projections that no economist with a straight face could back up. Yes, he radically slashes the budget in Medicare, Medicaid, education spending, services for the poor and disabled, and other domestic spending- but his spending cuts are basically just given to the wealthiest people in America, the Romneys of the world, in the form of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires as deep as his radical spending cuts.
The Ryan budget, which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed, is the ultimate fantasy of the far right and the extremist followers of Rand. It has virtually every cut and tax cut for millionaires ever proposed by right wing think tanks over the last 20 years in programs for the middle class and poor; it ends the guarantees of health and nursing home coverage for seniors and those with disabilities in Medicare and Medicaid; it completely deregulates Wall Street, health insurers, and oil and coal companies while keeping all their tax loopholes; it dramatically increases defense spending far beyond what even those in the Pentagon have been calling for, giving a massive benefit to defense contractors; it will, according to Brookings and every other analysis of the Ryan budget done, will force taxes on the middle class and the poor to rise in order to meet their deficit targets.
This budget is the ultimate document for making people like Mitt Romney and his wealthy benefactors like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and all those Wall Street bankers far richer while at the same time cutting the heart out of the things everyone else in our society benefits from. Our elderly parents will have to move in with us; our children will be going to devastated schools, and their student loans to go to college decimated; our kids with disabilities will have the programs to help them slashed; our air and water will get dirtier and dirtier; and the Too Big To Fail banks will have no one watching over them. All of this so that millionaires and billionaires can get larger tax cuts than even George W. Bush gave them.
The Romney-Ryan budget could just as easily be called the Ayn Rand budget, because it does everything Rand dreamed of. She proclaimed selfishness as the ultimate virtue, and said that Christian charity and compassion was evil and weakened society. She rejected the idea of the Golden Rule and that we are to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper. She glorified the wealthy as the only ones who mattered in society, the only ones who weren’t leeches and failures. This is her budget, the budget that she inspired Paul Ryan to write. Bain Capital was her kind of company, where the wealthy and well-connected did whatever it took, ran over whoever it took, to be successful. If there is an afterlife with a heaven and a hell, I think it is quite likely she is being tormented in hell, but even so she would have to be looking up and glorying in this selection today. The founder of Bain Capital and the author of the Ryan budget as the Republican nominees for President and VP: this is Ayn Rand’s moment.
This is the dream ticket for Democrats and progressives. They have given us the ultimate chance to make our case as to why the Wall Street ethics of Bain and the ultimate suck-up-to-the-rich budget of Ryan are fundamentally wrong for America. This is not a debate about how we cut the federal deficit, as many Democrats have far more realistic and responsible plans to do that. This campaign instead is about the ultimate debate in values and morality and what will benefit the future of the vast majority of Americans more. If we preach the historic values that made this country great — our beloved communities, our belief that we are all in this together and that we rise or fall as one people, our belief that our policies should be oriented toward making the middle class prosperous and growing, our belief in the Golden Rule and government of,by, and for the people — we will win this debate and this campaign. The values of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Ayn Rand will not prevail if we make our case without fear and equivocation to the American public.