The following article, which first appeared in the Cleveland plain Dealer, is by John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University and co-author with Sherry lee Linkon of “Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.“
People in Youngstown were excited when, in his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama cited the new $70 million National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) hub as central to his emerging economic and manufacturing policy. An investment in new manufacturing in a city still struggling three decades after deindustrialization might seem both economically and politically savvy, but it’s not clear that NAMII will either strengthen the local economy or attract more votes for Democrats in the future.
Over the last decade, research-and-development manufacturing hubs have become a dominant paradigm for rebuilding a competitive manufacturing sector, and Obama plans to create 17 more of them around the United States. They bring together state and local governments, universities and businesses to confront technological challenges through innovative design and manufacturing methods. In Youngstown, the hub is devoted to the development and expansion of “3D printing,” which deposits thin layers of material to design and shape various components. This “3D” process enhances business competitiveness by reducing design, manufacturing and energy costs.
But local workers are rightly cautious about NAMII. They understand that 3D printing technology could cost some of them jobs. Like other technology, it will require more skills from some while rendering others’ skills obsolete. Just as computer-aided manufacturing has reduced many skilled machinists to machine tenders, and information technology has reduced some accountants to data processors, 3D printing will likely displace at least as many machinists and tool-and-die makers as it creates new positions, and it could make small-scale machine shops redundant. Supporters will tout the new jobs and improved business efficiency created by NAMII, but they’re not likely to even acknowledge the associated job losses.
As with previous high-tech efforts in the Mahoning Valley, workers may well be new arrivals who will rent or buy homes in the suburbs or commute from other cities in the region. As one resident told National Public Radio, most locals don’t even recognize Youngstown as the center of an emerging “tech belt,” with NAMII at its core. It is important to remember that high-tech industries aren’t enough to repair the economic dislocations caused by more than 30 years of disinvestment and deindustrialization.
As Richard Florida and Michele Maynard have suggested in The Atlantic’s Cities website, compared with manufacturing in the past, advanced manufacturing no longer generates many good-paying jobs with high wages and benefits. NAMII may well help local businesses to develop, but Youngstown and cities like it would be wrong to pin all of their hopes on investments in advanced manufacturing. High-tech operations may not be sufficient to offset a globalized economy, a disadvantageous trade policy, currency manipulation and tax policies that encourage offshoring, all of which play a critical role.
Nor will Democratic-led investment in advanced manufacturing necessarily attract new voters to the party. Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress has argued that while the Obama coalition has the potential to change future politics, the president’s promise to invest in more high-tech manufacturing jobs may not translate into Democratic votes. To make its new majority sustainable, Teixeira argues, the Democratic Party must expand white working-class support, especially in states where minority growth is slow. Such voters are looking for material improvements for themselves and their families, and without substantive improvements, the working class could swing Ohio’s votes back to Republicans, as happened in 2010.
In 2012, Obama won in Ohio because of a combination of minority turnout and above-average support from the white working class, most likely in response to the stimulus package and the auto bailout. To hold onto those voters, the Democrats will have to show that they have produced strategies that generate faster, stronger economic growth. That’s especially important in states like Ohio, where the minority share of eligible voters is not growing rapidly, so white working-class votes matter more than in many other states.
Youngstown residents appreciated the extra attention their struggling city received and hope that federal investment in high-tech, advanced manufacturing will yield real, good jobs. While local Democrats can take credit for establishing NAMII and the emerging Tech Belt, Ohio Democrats should remember that they could also share the blame if the investment doesn’t pay off and if exaggerated expectations are dashed, especially for the working class.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’ HuffPo post, “Why Obama Must Meet the Republican Lies Directly” merits a thoughtful read by President Obama and his messaging team. Reich faults the administration for being anchored in a short-sighted strategy regarding the sequester, which is to “tell Americans how awful the spending cuts will be, and blame Republicans for them.” Reich responds:

It won’t work. These tactical messages are getting in the way of the larger truth, which the President must hammer home: The Republicans’ austerity economics and trickle-down economics are dangerous, bald-faced lies.

Reich concedes that the sequester cuts will cause a lot of pain, but it will be delayed in some cases and too many Americans won’t feel the pain in time to hold the Republicans accountable. Many others won’t experience much hardship. In addition, the GOP message machine could mobilize to blame the President for “high-visibility consequences of the spending cuts — such as a sudden dearth of air-traffic controllers” and force Obama to make the cuts himself. Worse, adds Reich, “there’s no end to this. After Friday’s sequester comes the showdown over continuing funding of the government beyond March 27. Then another fight over the debt ceiling.”
Instead argues Reich:

The White House must directly rebut the two big lies that fuel the Republican assault — and that have fueled it since the showdown over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011.
The first big lie is austerity economics — the claim that the budget deficit is the nation’s biggest economic problem now, responsible for the anemic recovery…Wrong. The problem is too few jobs, lousy wages, and slow growth. Cutting the budget deficit anytime soon makes the problem worse because it reduces overall demand. As a result, the economy will slow or fall into recession — which enlarges the deficit in proportion. You want proof? Look at what austerity economics has done to Europe.
The second big lie is trickle-down economics — the claim that we get more jobs and growth if corporations and the rich have more money because they’re the job creators, and job growth would be hurt if their taxes were hiked…Wrong. The real job creators are the broad middle class and everyone who aspires to join it. Their purchases keep economy going.
…These two lies — austerity economics and trickle-down economics — are being told over and over by Republicans and their mouthpieces on Fox News, yell radio, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. They are wrong and they are dangerous…Yet unless they are rebutted clearly and forcefully, the nation will continue to careen from crisis to crisis, showdown to showdown.

Reich argues that the white house should play to its strength and the GOP’s weakness:

President Obama has the bully pulpit. Americans trust him more than they do congressional Republicans. But he is letting micro-tactics get in the way of the larger truth. And he’s blurring his message with other messages — about gun control, immigration, and the environment. All are important, to be sure. But none has half a chance unless Americans understand how they’re being duped on the really big story.

The President’s messaging team may differ with Reich on this. But it’s important that they give due consideration to his point that a bully pulpit confrontation of the two big Republican lies — about value of austerity budgeting and ‘trickle down’ economics — is much needed.

While many commentators have written about the Republican campaign to rig the electoral college vote in key states, The Nation’s John Nichols has come up with a credible strategy for preventing it. if you are a Democrat in one of these states under Republican siege, print, clip and stick Nichols’ post, “Three Strategies to Block the Gerrymandering of the Electoral College” on the fridge. It will likely come in handy on the road to 2016.
The three strategies Nichols suggests include:

1. “NAME AND SHAME” THOSE WHO WOULD RIG ELECTIONS
2. ENGAGE IN THE DEBATE AND OFFER A POPULAR-VOTE ALTERNATIVE
3. MAKE GERRYMANDERING AN ISSUE

As regards point #1, many would say “But they have no shame.” It’s not hard to cite numerous instances of Republican shamelessness on a broad range of topics. Nonetheless, there are memes they don’t want to get stuck with. As Nichols explains:

When The Nation began writing several weeks ago about the Priebus plan, and specific efforts in swing states, the stories went viral. Social media matters in this struggle. So, too, does the attention coming from television and radio hosts such as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann.
The attention “names and shames” Republicans who are implementing the Priebus plan in states such as Virginia. But it also puts pressure on Republicans who are considering doing so. Significantly, when Florida legislative leaders were asked by The Miami Herald about the proposal, the biggest swing state’s most powerful Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from the anti-democratic initiative. Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford said, “To me, that’s like saying in a football game, ‘We should have only three quarters, because we were winning after three quarters and the beat us in the fourth. I don’t think we need to change the rules of the game, I think we need to get better.”

Progressives often flunk when it comes to “naming and shaming.” The progressive blogosphere generally does its part creating national buzz calling attention to injustices. But this doesn’t help enough to generate local coverage confronting electoral vote-suppressing perps on camera. It’s also about local protestors confronting these Republicans wherever they appear, again and again, until they renounce the project. That’s the job of Democratic activists. Nichols adds that an important part of “shaming” is to ferret out Republicans who have a conscience and who are willing to publicly denounce electoral vote suppression as morally repulsive.
With respect to Nichols’ second strategy, he elaborates:

…The right response is to highlight the anti-democratic character of the Electoral College and to push for a national popular vote. This will require a constitutional amendment. That takes work. But the process is in play. States across the country have endorsed plans to respect the popular vote that are advanced by FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy.
“The very fact that a scenario [in which a rigged Electoral College allows a popular-vote loser to become president] is even legally possible should give us all pause,” argues FairVote’s Rob Richie. “Election of the president should be a fair process where all American voters should have an equal ability to hold their president accountable. It’s time for the nation to embrace one-person, one-vote elections and the ‘fair fight’ represented by a national popular vote. Let’s forever dismiss the potential of such electoral hooliganism and finally do what the overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently preferred: make every vote equal with a national popular vote for president.”
Understanding, talking about and promoting the National Popular Vote campaign is an essential response to every proposal to rig the Electoral College. It pulls the debate out of the weeds of partisanship and appeals to a sense of fairness in Democrats, independents and responsible Republicans.

In other words, make Republican advocates of electoral college gerrymandering explain on camera why they won’t support direct popular election of The President — a reform which has broad popular support. Asked “Would you vote for or against a law that would do away with the Electoral College and base the election of the president on the total vote cast throughout the nation?,” 63 percent said yes in a Gallup poll taken Jan. 8-9, with 29 percent opposed.
Nichols’ third strategy, “make gerrymandering an issue,” is a little tricky because it relies on the integrity of the courts. But his reasoning makes sense, and it would be political neglect not to try it:

…When gerrymandering threatens the integrity of national elections and the governing of the country, this opens a new avenue for challenging what remains the most common tool for rigging elections.
It is time for state attorneys general who have track records of supporting democracy initiatives, such as New York’s Eric Schneiderman, and state elections officials, such as Minnesota’s Mark Ritchie, to start looking at legal strategies to challenging the Priebus plan in particular and gerrymandering as it influences national elections. This really is an assault on the one-person, one-vote premise of the American experiment. And retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, among others, is advocating for a renewed push on behalf of fair elections.
“[It] goes back to the fundamental equal protection principle that government has the duty to be impartial. When it’s engaged in districting it should be impartial,” Stevens explained in a recent interview. “Nowadays, the political parties acknowledge that they are deliberately trying to gerrymander the districts in a way that will help the majority.”
This, argues Stevens, is “outrageously unconstitutional in my judgment. The government cannot gerrymander for the purpose of helping the majority party; the government should be redistricting for the purpose of creating appropriate legislative districts. And the government ought to start with the notion that districts should be compact and contiguous as statutes used to require.”
Stevens says the courts, which often intervene on voting rights cases involving minority representation, and in cases where states with divided government cannot settle on new district lines, should engage with the purpose of countering gerrymandering…”If the Court followed neutral principles in whatever rules they adopted, the rules would apply equally to the Republicans and Democrats,” says the retired Justice, a key player on voting and democracy issues during his thirty-five-year tenure on the High Court. “I think that line of cases would generate a body of law such as the one-person, one-vote cases that would be administered in a neutral way. This is one of my major disappointments in my entire career: that I was so totally unsuccessful in persuading the Court on something so obviously correct. Indeed, I think that the Court’s failure to act in this area is one of the things that has contributed to the much greater partisanship in legislative bodies…”
Justice Stevens is right. That partisanship has moved from gerrymandering the state lines and US House lines to gerrymandering the presidential vote. The moment is ripe for a constitutional intervention.

Nichols’ call to arms is right on time at this early stage. Democrats must understand that once battleground state electoral college votes have been rigged to elect Republicans, it will be awfully hard, if not impossible, to undo the travesty. The time to beat back this threat is now.

Here’s the lead from an article in Politico this weekend titled “GOP leaders insist no overhaul needed”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Republican Party honchos who huddled here for their first big gathering since the election devoted lots of time talking about the need to welcome Latinos and women, close the technology gap with Democrats and stop the self-destructive talk about rape. But the party’s main problem, dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week, is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself. Overwhelmingly they insisted that substantive policy changes aren’t the answer to last year’s losses.
“It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. “In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said.”
…New Hampshire chairman Wayne MacDonald said party leadings need to work on “not being sour-pusses on television or the radio” – that there is a way to be firm and assertive without being mean-spirited.
“Nobody is saying the Republican Party has to change our beliefs in any of our platform planks,” he said

Now here are a few excerpts from the 2012 Republican Platform Plank on Immigration
Encouraging Self-Deportation:

We will create humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily, while enforcing the law against those who overstay their visas

Supporting State Efforts to “make their lives so miserable they go back home.”

State efforts to reduce illegal immigration must be encouraged, not attacked. The pending Department of Justice lawsuits against Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah must be dismissed immediately.

Keeping Them Out

The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built.

Punishing Those Who Help Them

In order to restore the rule of law, federal funding should be denied to sanctuary cities that violate federal law and endanger their own citizens

Denying Funds to Universities

Federal funding should be denied to universities that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens, in open defiance of federal law

But Latinos really shouldn’t worry. The GOP promises they won’t be “sour-pusses” about it.

Here’s Managing Editor Ed Kilgore in his Political Animal column describing Paul Ryan’s latest attempt to clean up his Ayn Rand extremist act:

Paul Ryan exhibited some chutzpah today in a cry of foul play aimed at the president’s shot at those who divide Americans into “takers and makers,” which until it got him into trouble in 2012 was one of the Wisconsin Randian’s favorite rhetorical devices.
According to the Weekly Standard, Ryan went on television this morning and perhaps having read Michael Gerson’s WaPo op-ed accusing the president of creating a “raging bonfire of straw men, played the victim his own self:
Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan knocked President Barack Obama for “shadowbox[ing] a straw man” in his inaugural address. Speaking Tuesday morning on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show to guest host Raymond Arroyo, Ryan responded to Obama’s statement that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security “do not make us a nation of takers, they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
Ryan called Obama’s insinuation that he and other reform-minded Republicans consider recipients of these benefits “takers” a “switcheroo.”
“It’s kind of a convenient twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man to try to win an argument by default,” Ryan said.
“No one is suggesting that what we call our ‘earned entitlements’, entitlements you pay for, you know, like payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, are putting you in a ‘taker’ category,” Ryan continued. “The concern that people like me have been raising is we do not want to encourage a dependency culture. This is why we called for welfare reform.
Note first off that Ryan conveniently omits mentioning Medicaid in his self-defense against Obama’s alleged calumny, for the good reason that it is not an “earned entitlement” based on payroll tax deductions. For that matter, Ryan is advancing an interpretation of Medicare that he knows is completely erroneous, because over 40% of Medicare expenditures come from general revenues rather than payroll taxes or premiums. Who knows, maybe Ryan thinks Medicare beneficiaries are “takers” just three days out of every week, or is telegraphing a future intention to limit benefits to payroll taxes paid.
But in fact, Republicans deploying the taker/maker dichotomy, most especially Paul Ryan, are almost always referring to people who receive more federal government benefits, regardless of their type or justification, than they pay in federal taxes. Here’s an example from Ryan:

Read more…

This weekend communications guru Frank Luntz offered his messaging advice to Republicans in a Washington Post op-ed. Take this free test and see how close you come to being just as profound a political thinker and strategist as he is.
Part 1.
Do you think Republicans should stop using the following phrases:
• Calling the economy “a hostage you might take a chance at shooting”
• Telling undocumented Latinos to “self-deport.”
If you answered that Republicans should stop using both phrases, congratulations, that’s Luntz’s advice too. You scored 100% on part 1
Part 2
Should Republicans make the following changes in their rhetoric:
• Instead of asking “should the rich pay more,” change the question to “Should Washington take more?”
• Instead of using the phrase “committing fiscal child abuse,” should Republicans use the terms “piling debt on our children” or “mortgaging the American dream.”
• Instead of being the party of “small businesses and job creators”, should House Republicans call themselves the party of “hardworking taxpayers”.
• Instead of “smaller government,” should Republicans talk about “more efficient and effective government”
• Instead of using the term “tax reform,” should Republicans talk about making the IRS code “simpler, flatter and fairer”
• Instead of using the terms “entitlement reform” or “controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security”, should Republicans talk about “how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them.”
If you said Republicans should make all these changes to their rhetoric, congratulations, that’s Luntz’s advice too. You scored a breathtaking 100% on part 2.
Part 3
Should Republicans:
• “Advocate a values-based approach”
• “Talk to Americans about accountability, personal responsibility and freedom.”
• “Be more empathetic”
• “Advocate a “balanced, responsible approach”
• “Listen to voters, rather than lecturing them.”
• “Speak to voters’ aspirations, not just their pocketbooks”
• “SHow how GOP solutions help the want-to-haves, not just the already-haves”
If you said yes to all these recommendations, congratulations, that’s what Luntz said too. You scored 100% on part three.
Now test-takers, hold your breath – here’s how you did:

If you scored between 90 and 100%, congratulations, you too can be a nationally famous Republican messaging strategist just like Frank Luntz.
If you scored around 50%, you can run for congress in any district that doesn’t have a bookstore or Democratic voter within 200 miles.
If you scored 20% or less, you can easily get a job at any talk radio station that advertises gold bullion, survival gear and commemorative DVD’s of “Birth of a Nation”.

In every presidential election, many different causes are cited as tipping the scale in one direction or the other. There is certainly no shortage of reasons for President Obama’s re-election being bandied about.
One of the more interesting notions that has popped up in election post-mortems is that better-than-usual coverage of GOP-driven voter suppression was instrumental in energizing African and Latino Americans, and to some extent, even white moderates, as well as progressives. There are some interesting statistics to support the argument, although available data is not conclusive. For example, in “How the GOP’s War on Voting Backfired ,” The Nation’s Ari Berman explains,

Take a look at Ohio, where Ohio Republicans limited early voting hours as a way to decrease the African-American vote, which made up a majority of early voters in cities like Cleveland and Dayton. Early voting did fall relative to 2008 as a result of Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s cutbacks in early voting days and hours, but the overall share of the black electorate increased from 11 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2012. More than anything else, that explains why Barack Obama once again carried the state…According to CBS News: “More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008.”
The same thing happened with the Latino vote, which increased as a share of the electorate (from 9 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2012) and broke even stronger for Obama than in 2008 (from 67-31 in 2008 to 71-27 in 2012, according to CNN exit polling). The share of the Latino vote increased in swing states like Nevada (up 4 percent), Florida (up 3 percent) and Colorado (up 1 percent). Increased turnout and increased support for Obama among Latinos exceeded the margin of victory for the president in these three swing states.
We’re still waiting on the data to confirm this theory, but a backlash against voter suppression laws could help explain why minority voter turnout increased in 2012. “That’s an extremely reasonable theory to be operating from,” says Matt Barreto, co-founder of Latino Decisions, a Latino-focused polling and research firm. “There were huge organizing efforts in the black, Hispanic and Asian community, more than there would’ve been, as a direct result of the voter suppression efforts.” Groups like the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and the Asian-American Legal Defense Fund worked overtime to make sure their constituencies knew their voting rights.
…Racial minorities made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2012, up from 26 percent in 2008, and voted 80 percent for Obama. “Romney matched the best performance among white voters ever for a Republican challenger–and yet he lost decisively in the Electoral College,” wrote Ron Brownstein of National Journal. Minorities also accounted for 45 percent of Obama’s total vote. That means that in the not-so-distant-future, a Democrat will be able to win the presidency without needing a majority of white votes in his or her own coalition. In a country with growing diversity, if one party is committed to expanding the right to vote and the other party is committed to restricting the right to vote, it’s not hard to figure out which one will ultimately be more successful.

Of course the reason for the increase in the share of the electorate held by people of color could be that lots of white voters did not cast ballots on election day because they liked neither Romney or Obama. We will need the final white turnout as a percentage of the eligible white voter figures, and then compare them to ’08 to make a credible guestimate.
Joy-Anne Reid adds at The Griot:

Florida’s reduced early voting period actually galvanized black churches, who took full advantage of the one remaining Sunday to conduct a two-day “souls to the polls” marathon. And even as Election Day turned into a late Election Night, and with the race in Ohio, and thus for the 270 votes needed to win the presidency, called by 11 p.m., black voters remained in line in Miami-Dade and Broward, two heavily Democratic counties in Florida, where black voters broke turnout records even compared to 2008…
“Republicans thought that they could suppress the vote, but these efforts actually motivated people to get registered and cast a ballot,” Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner said. “It’s no surprise that the communities targeted by these policies came out to the polls in a big way–they saw this not just as an affront to their rights, but as a call to action.”
“From the tours we did in 22 states, it became clear to us that many blacks that were apathetic and indifferent became outraged and energized when they realized that [Republicans] were changing the rules in the middle of the game, in terms of voter ID laws, ending ‘souls to the polls,'” said Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, who also hosts MSNBC’s Politics Nation. “So what was just another election, even though it dealt with the re-election of the first black president, took on a new dimension when they realized that they were implementing the disenfranchisement of black voters.”

Read more…

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Earlier this week — as he was barnstorming the country for Barack Obama — former President Bill Clinton subbed in for the president as Obama flew back to Washington to oversee the country’s response to a major hurricane.
That would seem an appropriate context to ask the question, why hasn’t the most recent Republican President, George Bush, been barnstorming the country for Mitt Romney?
It says a lot that for most Americans this sounds like an absurd question.
Clinton was a major featured speaker at the Democratic Convention. Bush wasn’t even invited to Tampa.
Bush is not campaigning for Romney because he and the policies he implemented are politically radioactive to most American voters.
George Bush is off in political Siberia because the Romney campaign is doing everything humanly possible to prevent voters from realizing that Romney intends to return precisely those same failed Bush policies to the White House if he is elected president next week.
Let’s start with the matter that is uppermost in the country’s attention — the hurricane.
It’s fair to say that his response to Hurricane Katrina was not Bush’s finest hour. But Bush’s failure to respond quickly and effectively to Katrina was not simply a reflection of his administration’s incompetence. It was a reflection of the fact that his administration didn’t believe in government.
Natural disasters make people remember why it is so important that we have a society where we have each other’s back. They make us remember that government is the name we give to the things we choose to do together.
Natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy make us remember why the law of the jungle — why a self-centered, irresponsible, unbridled focus on you and you alone — isn’t what we learned in Sunday School.
Even far right New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reprimanded New Jersey citizens who refused to evacuate low-lying areas because they would put the lives of first responders at risk — because they had a responsibility to each other.
Bush — and his response to Katrina — exemplified the right wing’s failure to understand that most Americans believe in a society where we are all in this together, not all in this alone.
And Mitt Romney completely shares Bush’s view. Romney actually proposed eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and hand over responsibility for response to disasters to the states. Romney ignores that when disaster strikes, we are Americans first. We have each other’s back whether we are from Mississippi or New Jersey. We do that because it’s right. We also do it because while disaster may strike our neighbors in New Jersey today, it could strike those of us who live in Illinois tomorrow.
But of course there are many other reasons why the Republicans have failed to ask George Bush to campaign for their presidential ticket. Two stand out.
We have had two great economic experiments in America over the last 30 years. One succeeded. The other failed — in fact, it was a man-made disaster.
The first was led by President Bill Clinton. Clinton believed that you grow the economy from the middle out — not the top down. He understood that businesses don’t invest and hire unless there are customers out there with money in their pockets — that they are the “job creators” — not a bunch of hedge fund managers on Wall Street.

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The following article, by Democratic strategist and organizer Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross posted from HuffPo:
As Election Day grows closer, some pundits seem almost breathless in their prediction that the Presidential election will be close. Well, of course it will be close. It has been obvious from the campaign’s first day that it would be close. But there is overwhelming evidence that President Obama will win.
Why is the race so close?
1). First and foremost, the Republicans’ trickledown, let-Wall-Street-run-wild policies sent the economy into a catastrophic recession just as Obama took office. This was not your run of the mill business cycle recession. It was caused by a financial collapse the likes of which America had not seen since the Great Depression.
The historic evidence is very clear that whenever there is a recession induced by a financial collapse, it take years for an economy to recover. American did not fully recover from the Great Depression itself until World War II — almost twelve years after the stock market collapsed.
Had the Republicans remained in office and responded as Republican President Hoover did in 1929, the same fate could have awaited America once again. But instead, the Obama Administration moved immediately to stimulate the economy and shore up the financial system — and especially to rescue the auto industry — using policies that in most cases the GOP opposed.
Those policies have set the economy on a path toward sustained growth. But the Republicans have been hell-bent on stalling growth with the expressed purpose of defeating Obama this fall. They have sabotaged the economy by preventing even a vote on the Americans Jobs Act that most economists believe would create another 1.7 million jobs and would have prevented massive layoffs in state and local governments.
Mitt Romney is like an arsonist who complains that the fire department isn’t putting out his fire fast enough, then tries to convince America to allow him to take over the effort armed with buckets of gasoline — the same failed policies that caused the fire in the first place.
But the Republicans are right about one thing. It’s hard to get re-elected in a tough economic environment — even one that is improving. That is the main reason this election is close. If unemployment were at six percent, Obama would be re-elected by the same kind of electoral vote margins the Bill Clinton piled up in 1996.
2). The election is close because Wall Street — and super-wealthy right-wing oil tycoons like the Koch Brothers — have spent huge amounts of money to defeat Obama. This week alone, Romney and his outside group allies have booked $57 million in TV time.
Their financial advantage has been neutralized by the spectacular Obama fundraising operation — particularly the incredible small donor program that has raised funds from over 10 million individual contributions.
And its effect has also been ameliorated by the fact that TV spots can be bought by both campaigns at the lowest possible rate, and super PACs or outside groups must spend much more per television viewer.
But the fact remains that all of those negative attack ads about Obama have kept the race close.
3). The American electorate is closely divided. In 2008 the economy had collapsed under Republican rule. The GOP candidate was not very popular. And the Republican incumbent President was downright radioactive. Regardless, the Republican candidate still got 47 percent of the popular vote.
Of course the race will be close.
But there are at least eight very good reasons why Obama will win. The first four have to do with extreme right wing policies Romney has advocated that have made it clear to key blocks of voters that he is simply not on their side.

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TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore posts at The Washington Monthly on “The Endless Whine,” referring to the latest Republican orgy of self-pity “about the vicious treatment of poor Mitt Romney by the vicious, hateful, Obama-loving media.” Kilgore provides a couple of examples, then adds,

I’ve never completely understood the persecution complex of American conservative gabbers. They are, after all, aligned with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. They have their own large and very well-funded “shadow media” and public relations complex, even as the hated MSM constantly seeks to buy off criticism by conspicuously hiring conservative “voices.” They totally dominate one entire medium, radio, and dominate all media in many parts of the country. I get the distinct impression that conservative media types have a lot easier time supporting themselves than folks on the left…But to hear them, they are perpetually shunned and persecuted for their brave and selfless advocacy of the status quo and the status quo ante.

The GOP whinefest will undoubtedly continue ad nauseum. Meanwhile you can read the rest of Kilgore’s post right here.