But for a moment, let's live with the economy as a hot-button issue. There's certainly plenty to make of it. According to The Nation, in the last year prices of staples in the American diet like oranges, eggs, bread, and milk have risen double digits (10-20 percent). For families living month-to-month, paycheck to paycheck, this is a painful blow. As we all know, the current administration's economic policies favor tax cuts for the top one percent, who've become richer during the administration of President Bush. And now we see an attempt to stimulate the economy and plans to bail out the banks who carelessly lent money to high-risk home buyers with bad credit because those loan recipients are now, quite predictably, defaulting. According to the same Nation article, real wages have been declining since 2000 when adjusted for inflation--your money just won't go as far. Add to this the related and even steeper rise of gas prices--which adds to the retail cost of many consumer products--and you've got a snowball of seemingly small-time economic issues that erect serious obstacles in front of every working family.
Echoing Billy Joel, Oratorical Animal says the problems with the economy in this campaign are rhetorical and boil down to a matter of trust: the candidate who can communicate on the economy question will win the nomination.
Let us hope one of them emerges. Clearly John Edwards' platform makes him the undisputed champion of the working class in this race, but his candidacy is floundering against the glitz of two fellow Democrats. Lacking Edwards, can basic economic issues energize supporters of a winning ticket? We know the GOP will be shouting "class warfare" and will be happy to make Iraq a second or third most important issue. (Immigration, anyone?) Democrats interested in winning cannot let them get away with it, and the best way to do this is to be faster and better at talking about and talking to the people who've been losing out in this economy for years.
4 comments:
Good questions Lara. Sometimes economic issues gain political traction as defining political moments (No New Taxes in 1992), but other times the scale, scope or complexity of the problems make it difficult to translate. The S&L banking crises of the 1980s was surely significant, but it never become a dominant national campaign issue. You would think housing is more personal, and therefore easier to translate, but we will have to see how both parties respond to it.
Thanks for the comments. Stables' historical lesson is a good one--the issues that gain a foothold are often simple and can be communicated economically. They are issues (like adultery) that people can identify with. Were that not the case, the Enron scandal (remember that?) might have seriously damaged this administration.
The sub-prime housing issue is a difficult one to communicate in another regard. The banks and other critics can easily blame the eager home buyers who failed on their loans for their plight, even if the lenders had no business lending the money in the first place.
It now becomes an issue of which campaign can transition quick enough to address the current economic crisis. The success of the 1992 Clinton campaign, as you pointed out, was due in large part to the mantra of political strategist James Carville. "It's the Economy, Stupid" is just as relevant today as it was back then. The problem this time around is that none of the major candidates had planned on making it the central focus of their campaign. Instead, Democrats have spent four years planning to run against the war instead of for the economy. With the Surge bringing success by even the U.N.'s admission, the war has slipped off the front page. Now, each campaign must refocus and retool their message so that every question can be answered with a plan to fix the economy. Of course, that's assuming that any of them have a plan. Let's hope.
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