As an example, let's take the stimulus. Republicans never say the word "stimulus" without saying "failed" first, or some variation. John Boehner called it the "job-killing stimulus" recently, a nice change of pace, but the same idea. And that's Republican messaging. "Failed stimulus." People hear it, and they get it.
But what is the truth? The truth is, when Barack Obama became President, we had a few economic problems:
- The banking system was on the verge of collapse.
- People were concerned that we might be starting a depression.
- We were losing more than 500,000 jobs per month.
- Economic output was declining.
- The stock market was in the toilet.
- The American auto companies were close to closing their doors.
Since then, the banking system has stabilized, no one talks about a depression anymore, we have started to gain back some jobs (though not nearly enough), the recession (not depression!) is over and the economy is expanding, the stock market has increased by about 40%, and the auto companies have recovered very nicely. TARP ended up costing less than $100 billion rather than the $750 billion originally authorized by the Bush administration. American companies are now reporting record profits. Oh, and the Congressional Budget Office, the group of people who are paid to make these estimates, says the stimulus created between 1.4 and 3.2 million jobs.
Democratic messaging tends to sound a little like that paragraph I just wrote. Republican messaging is "failed stimulus." You have to pay a little more attention to get the Democratic messaging, and you have to think a little bit. Republicans just have to remember two words, and they don't even have to make any sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment