Remember during the height if the Iraq war, we had all that talk about the military death toll? 1000. 1500. 2000 was a big one.
Well, Obama's got his own grim milestone dealo, although I doubt the media will give it nearly the same amount of attention. Eclipsing the 10% unemployment mark will be bad news for Bush Obama. this article dovetails nicely with my point:
Politically, it is the point at which people start looking for someone to blame. Obama and his people will blame the president's predecessor. This is appropriate, as George Bush's economic and regulatory policies were incredibly unsound and destructive.
The problem, of course, is that the blame game gets harder when it becomes possible to link a sitting president's actions to soaring unemployment figures.
States that have been especially hard hit by the current recession -- Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, among others -- and urban areas that have been devastated by it (according to the Labor Department, 93 metropolitan areas registering an unemployment rate of at least 10 percent in April) now face the prospect of significant additional job losses in the coming months as a result of the administration's auto bailout scheme.
Ut oh, looks like shuttering the dealerships could nullify those 150,000 jobs Obama "saved or created":
Additionally, the companies plan to shutter roughly 3,000 car dealerships could cost as many as 150,000 additional jobs.
Heartache!!
Blaming Bush is legitimate -- as is blaming Bill Clinton, who gave us the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and permanent normalization of trade relations with China.
But there comes a time when a president "owns" his recession.
If the country is socked with a double-digit unemployment rate, and if the actions of the administration that is in charge are seen as feeding the increase in joblessness, that's the political point of no return.
Voters, especially in Great Lakes battleground states where Democrats picked up lots of House seats and electoral votes in 2006 and 2008, will start looking for alternatives. And even Republicans who have not come up with much more than a monosyllabic message -- "no" -- could start to look wise, if not particularly articulate.
Jenny Granholm has played the "It's John Engler's fault, It's George Bush's fault" ever since she got elected. Michigan is in the toilet, as is her popularity. There comes a time when people are just sick of excuses. So, Obama's got .6% left of "I'm not responsible" until he hits the GRIM MILESTONE of 10% unemployment.
The current "deciders" appear to be members of Obama's economic team -- led by the likes of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and rest of the "public servants" formerly known as Wall Street insiders. Their bad calls, especially on the auto bailout, could give America a "jobless recovery" and a politically-vulnerable president.
Of course, I fully expect the media to provide ample cover for teh One. Will there be banner headlines announcing 10% unemployment? Yesterday, I decided I was no longer going to call the media "Liberal." It's not liberal, because that is giving it too much credit. If it were liberal, it would apply the critical eye equally. They, so far, have carried Obama's water. We'll see if there is a shift in the coming months. If not, I will dance (happily) on their grave.
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