In a sane political universe
by digby
This is sort of sadly ironic in light of my previous post, but just so nobody gets the idea that it's impossible to do anything but what's being done, Jared Bernstein has a very nice primer on how a committed liberal who's made a mistake might make the proverbial pivot:
Suppose you were a policy maker who wanted to pivot away from emphasizing the need to reduce the budget deficit and towards the need to reduce the jobs deficit.
You’d get out there on TV and stress the 20+ million un- and underemployed, including the 45% of the unemployed who have been jobless for at least half a year (about as high as it’s ever been). You’d stress the recent slowing of any already slow-growth recovery, and you’d stress the low cost of borrowing, which significantly boosts your bang-for-buck in terms of spending on jobs right now. And you’d remind anyone listening that you haven’t forsaken the truly necessary work of getting the budget on a sustainable path. It’s just that with unemployment at 9.1%, deficit reduction simply isn’t the country’s most important mandate right now. That would be jobs.
So far, so good. But what do you say to the follow up question: OK, you want to target jobs—what’s your plan?
I’d suggest starting with the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.
Again, sadly ironic.
Read the whole post. It will remind you of what a sane political world that wasn't being run by greedhead disaster capitalists, teabagging fools and cowards might look like. (I'll let you decide who's who.)
.