The better jobs report released today has many people scrambling to figure out who will get credit for the the coming economic recovery. My take is decidedly different. The improvement in the jobs situation is very tepid, but certainly better than it was in 2009. But the incoming GOP House is poised to insist on policies (slashing government spending in particular) that will certainly do great damage to the economy, particularly with regard to job creation. The question in my mind is not who gets the credit, but rather who will be blamed for the coming 1937-like economic slump, particularly with regard to jobs.

The answer to that question will not only be critical to deciding who wins the 2012 election, but whether the nation can escape this economic malaise.It is my view that the GOP policies will be enacted and the key for Democrats is to make sure that the policies are seen as GOP policies. Then in 2012, Dems and Obama need to run against the result of the GOP policies. Which I expect to be near catastrophic for the economy.

Speaking for me only

Better news:

The economy generated a net gain in jobs for the first time in five months in October, as businesses stepped up their painfully slow pace of hiring.But the unemployment rate, measured by a separate survey of households, remained stuck at 9.6 percent for the third straight month.

The Labor Department said Friday its survey of employers showed a net gain of 151,000 jobs last month, the first increase since May. Private employers hired 159,000 workers, the best since April.

While this level of job growth will not lower the unemployment rate, at least it stops the bleeding. It also puts the the incoming GOP Congress on the spot. The Obama Administration has stopped the bleeding (or so the numbers suggest) -- slashing government spending will almost certainly accelerate unemployment - if in the next 2 years unemployment goes up, it will be on the GOP's watch. Dems and Obama need to state clearly their views of what needs to be done and then when the GOP prevails on the policy, the GOP will own the result.

Speaking for me only

Open Thread.

Not only are we not going to get any more stimulus (in fact, the likelihood is a decrease in federal government spending), quantitative easing is a bad idea:

[Joe Stiglitz:] [T]he way I’d think about using monetary policy first is in a cost-benefit analysis. The likely benefit of monetary easing is very low for all the reasons I’ve said. Now, if it were costless, you might say, sure, the Fed messed up, it feels guilty, it wants to show it’s worried about unemployment, so why not let it do what it can do? But this is not costless. The first cost is the potential of currency wars [. . .] The second cost, which people haven’t talked about, is that the reason the private market for mortgages has dried up is that everybody knows the moment the government withdraws from the mortgage market, the effect will be that there will be a capital loss on the mortgages -- and the same thing goes for our long-term bonds. [. . .] The third point is that to avoid recognizing the loss, the Fed is likely to do silly things, like rather than buying and selling government bonds, they’ll pay interest on deposits banks make to the Federal Reserve in order to absorb the liquidity.

See also Krugman and DeLong. But what the hell do they know? They were only right about everything on the economy.

Speaking for me only

Jed Lewison asks a simple question:

[H]ow [did] the GOP managed to capture 30% of the votes of the 37% of people who listed their top priority as increasing spending to create jobs.

Simple answer - politics is stupid. Then again, President Obama and the Democratic Congress were not promising to increase spending to create jobs. The President himself said it was time for the government to tighten its belt. So the stupidity was all around us.

Perhaps someone might figure this out by now, but people vote based on how they are doing, especially economically. The Democrats did not deliver adequate results regarding the economy. That's why they lost. As Atrios wrote:

The policy failure was about the economy and the foreclosure crisis, and the politics was the failure to recognize how deeply this mattered. No matter what people say in polls, nobody cares about the deficit or "spending," they care about whether they have any money. [. . .] I don't know how politicians lacked the self-preservation skills to recognize that if they failed to deliver on the economy they would fail, but that's what happened.

Indeed. Speaking for me only

On Tuesday, Marco Rubio won a smashing victory in the Florida Senate race. He won 49% of the vote. A mandate! But 49% means something different when Dems garner it:

Clinton caught a series of lucky breaks from events and from his own enemies. And the comeback only won him 49 percent of the vote: The man widely regarded as one of the most talented Democratic politicians of modern history never commanded a majority in a national election.

The man in Florida who won a smashing victory never commanded a majority in a statewide election. Somehow I don't expect that line to be written. The Beltway is soooo predictable.

Speaking for me only

I like this piece from The Democratic Strategist on making the debate about "What Dems Should Do" a constructive one. But I take issue with this portion:

While various elements of both the centrist and progressive wings of the party may sincerely believe that in the long run a smaller but more ideologically united party would ultimately be preferable, the present moment categorically demands a basic level of Democratic unity from every element of the coalition.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is silly. No one wants a SMALLER party. Everyone wants a larger party that adheres to the views they espouse. Ed Kilgore, one of the authors of this piece, wrote a terrific piece last December regarding the very real substantive differences on health care policy in the Democratic Party. The group whose view prevailed love that Affordable Health Care Act. The rest of us think the "reform" part of the bill is a bad joke (we like Medicaid expansion of course.) What both groups want is for MORE people to agree with them. I say let the debate go forward, with respect of course. But more importantly, with honesty. The Third Way is not an honest organization. And I won't stop saying that until The Third Way stops being dishonest. The virtue of folks like Ed Kilgore, Stan Greenberg, Ruy Texeira and William Galston (the folks behind TDS) is their ability to argue their views with respect and integrity. I don't agree with them that much on the politics, but I will defend their way of handling the debate. They are models to us all.

Speaking for me only

Short answer - nothing by Dems in the next 2 years. Getting ready for 2012, by Dems and progressives alike, should be the plan. Markos says:

What has happened has happened. I'm less interested in talking about the ways the administration screwed up, than in what they're going to do about it in preparation of 2012. First thing's first -- stop bashing the base, or the professional left, or whatever liberal boogeymen pisses them off. Fact is, people who fall in those disaffected categories -- the young, blacks, Latinos -- don't read blogs, or watch Keith Olbermann, or read Firedoglake. But they are losing their jobs and their homes, and they see Wall Street get all manners of bailouts without any of it trickling down to them. That has killed us. Make their lives better, or (since nothing will happen with Boehner in the House) at least fight to make their lives better.

This isn't about throwing a bone to the base to make them happy, it's about doing the right thing for America -- fight for jobs, fight for opportunity, fight for equality under the law. Democrats believe that government can make people's lives better, so embrace and fight for that belief. If Democrats are in it to protect Goldman Sachs, they might as well flip to the other team.

(Emphasis supplied.) The next two years can't produce anything worthwhile in terms of policy (unless Obama decides to use the HAMP money for a HOLC.) Markos is right. Progress won't happen in the next two years. But avoiding exacerbating the problem is an attainable goal. And setting up the fight for what to do after 2012 is a must. The truth is Obama and the Dems probably won't do anything right in the next 2 years or 10, imo. But we can hope they do. In the meantime, progressives need to fight to shape the Dem Party. To me, that means fighting to get candidates who will fight for the right thing in 2012. Don't expect anything on policy in the next 2 years.

Speaking for me only

All blogged out for today. Time for Survivor, America's Next Top Model and The Defenders.

Our earlier open thread is full, here's another one, all topics welcome.

A Missouri judge today found Dale Helmig innocent of killing his mother in 1993, a crime for which he has served 17 years in prison. The ruling follows a week-long hearing in July on whether Dale should receive a new trial.

DeKalb County Senior Judge Warren McElwain ruled that Helmig "established his innocence by clear and convincing evidence." He called Helmig, who was convicted in 1996 of killing his mother three years earlier in central Missouri's Osage County, a "victim of manifest injustice."

This one is personal for me, since I spent more than a week in Missouri interviewing Dale Helmig, his family, witnesses, the judge, prosecutors and Dale's trial and appellate defense counsel, for a 2000 TNT movie about his case, Was Justice Denied?. We also conducted our own investigation of the facts and reviewed all of the trial transcripts. I've continued to follow the case through its ups and downs here on TalkLeft. [More...]

We all know Prop 19 lost in California, although it did get a respectable 46% of the vote. But, how did other marijuana initiatives fare across the country? Marijuana Policy Project has this recap (no link yet, received by e-mail):

• Arizona: Proposition 203, which would bring a working medical marijuana law to the state, is too-close-to-call at the moment, as tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of additional ballots remain to be counted. MPP will continue to closely monitor the outcome of this proposition over the coming days.

• South Dakota: Measure 13, which would have protected seriously ill South Dakota residents from arrest and prosecution for using medical marijuana with their doctor’s recommendation, was ultimately rejected by voters.

[More...]

The media comes to its senses: MSNBC reports only 32% of tea party candidates won.

For all the talk of the Tea Party's strength - and there will certainly be a significant number of their candidates in Congress - just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election. A few races remain too close to call.

It's also important to distinguish between a candidate who is a tea-partier and those merely endorsed by tea-partiers. The tea-party can be said to have played a role in the wins of the first, but not necessarily the second. [More...]