The weird thing we ask of voters.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

We ask voters to turn out in large numbers to support fuck-ups because the alternative is worse.

In particular, we ask voters who don't know the first thing about the economy except that it hurts to support a party/administration that has fucked up on the economy like there was a prize for doing so. We didn't start the trouble but we didn't prevent it and we have done a very poor job of ameliorating it.

Electing Republicans will turn Obama's hapless lost-decade recipe into an outright depression.

It's true. They will.

But why on Earth does anyone expect voters to make such nuanced decisions?

Here is what a voter knows:

1) The economy is a terrible crisis.

True.

2) Obama has fucked up the handling of the economy in rather spectacular fashion.

True.

Yes, Republicans would fuck it up even more spectacularly. Yes, if McCain had won we would all be living in cardboard boxes today. True, true, true. But it takes some knowing to understand how and why that is.

We have a two party system. Only a lunatic or paid shill could pretend the Democrats have done a good job on the economy. So all we have going for us as an argument is that somebody else would do worse.

So in political terms we have nothing.

When an oncologist botches a person's cancer treatment that person is liable to conclude that main-stream medicine is crap and that they should start buying shark-fins or magnetic bracelets from con-artists.

Good decision? No. Understandable human reaction? Yes. A desperate person will do bold, and thus often foolish, things.

And this is a desperate electorate right now.

Rather than asking to voters to choose people doing a bad job over demented economic-sociopaths the best plan would have been to do something other than a ridiculously horrible job on the big crisis facing the nation.

[Make7]

1. How has Obama fucked up the handling of the economy in rather spectacular fashion? ( n/t )

[Arkana]

2. He didn't nationalize the banks/BP/all oil companies/all insurance companies.

Also, banksters!

[sandnsea]

3. "voters who don't know the first thing about the economy"

That would be those who think "Obama has fucked up the handling of the economy in rather spectacular fashion."

Every day that you're not eating dirt, count it as a success for Obama's handling of the economy. We WERE headed there.

[treestar]

4. The voters sound like such hapless victims here

If they truly wanted to pay attention, they could vote in anyone they wanted to. The majority of them choose to stay uninformed and uninvolved. They sat back and let Reagan and Bush get elected. And now they get to complain because things are "fucked up?"

[Jennicut]

5. The economy was fucked up long before Obama took office. It was fucked up a lot worse, actually.