Top Obama Adviser (Plouffe): Unemployment WON'T matter in 2012 election

[nashville_brook]

Wow -- is this a product of delusion or desperation?


http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/170309-plouffe-says-jobs-rate-not-key-in-2012

Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012

By Ian Swanson - 07/07/11 08:25 PM ET

President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

Plouffe should probably hope that’s the case, since dismal job figures aren’t expected to get any better for Obama and the economy on Friday.

Most economists expect a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that the nation added about 100,000 jobs in June. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth, let alone lower the unemployment rate or make a dent in the 9 million jobs lost during the so called Great Recession.

It’s looking more and more like Obama will have to do something no president has done since Franklin Roosevelt: Win reelection with unemployment around 8 percent.

[Springer9]

1. Oh Plouffe!

n/t

[myrna minx]

2. Is 2012 when all of our ponies are scheduled to be delivered!?

I can't wait! :hi:

[Enrique]

3. Krugman suggested Obama might be getting his economic advice from his political team

because a lot of people have left his economic team and many positions are vacant.

[nashville_brook]

4. yep -- there's a lot to glean from the comings/goings of his staff...

he's down to a very small group of people he trusts (who don't criticize him).

[emulatorloo]

6. I thought DU hated his economic advisors. There are always threads about that.

[emulatorloo]

5. Unemployment may not matter if the Repub nominee is a teabagger

So far pretty much all of them have embraced teabaggery.

[nashville_brook]

9. if the GOP goes with an economic populist there might be trouble

[emulatorloo]

15. Which one is that?

[nashville_brook]

17. any one can adopt the rhetoric of economic populism and whup Obama's let'em eat cake approach

[emulatorloo]

21. Of the current crop - which one? Sorry if I wasn't clear the first time.

Thanks!

[jtown1123]

7. DELUSIONAL. They are so out of touch it's alarming.

[Fearless]

8. It won't matter... their trying to cut SS et al. will be their downfall.

[emulatorloo]

16. Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.

I see a lot of "speculation" about medicare and social security cuts. Speculation is not fact.

It does bring up a question though.

What if Social Security benefits were cut for the top 5% or so. Rich people don't need social security or medicare. Would DU be for or against that?

[Fearless]

27. They are talking about changing the COLA formula... not cutting it from the rich. n/t

[Mudoria]

10. What was the mantra during the first Clinton campaign?

"It's the economy stupid!". Amazing how our present leader and his staff have forgotten this very important idea.

[cherokeeprogressive]

11. When you control the numbers, and can revise them after the fact, maybe he's right.

Someone from the administration seems to say every time the jobs numbers are released that the current number reflects a minor turn for the better. Two months later when no one's looking, numbers are revised downward as the current numbers are released, causing someone from the administration to say the current numbers reflect a minor turn for the better and those old revised numbers do not get a mention.

Does anyone see a pattern here? Because I'm seeing a pattern here.

Fuck it. If the most important thing in the world is that Barack Obama be reelected a year from this November, I say we call unemployment at oh, 4 percent or so for Sept. and Oct 2012. Then, after the election is over, release the real numbers. Then, President Obama can really get to work manufacturing hope and change.

[lunatica]

12. I guess they expect the unemployed won't be voting then

What Plouffe must really mean is the unemployed vote won't matter since they won't vote anyway.

[nashville_brook]

13. the unemployed don't write giant campaign contribution checks

[corpseratemedia]

14. it matters as all those unemployed will either not vote or may vote against him

[PATRICK]

18. The "Not matters"

are multiplying faster than the job losses. The fact that the super enriched corporations are swamping the numbers in favor of the generic GOP candidate and those "lesser" offices suddenly doesn't matter compared to the "number of donors"- those employed, satisfied or afraid enough to repeat their commitment of 2008- even if the WH hasn't done the same for them. Traditionally the biggest war chest wins, the system from ballot to voice box favors any GOP contender, corporate clout rules over populist potential(clearly in the results if not the promises), and as goes the economy so goes the momentum to almost any alternative. In all areas the president has for whatever reasons accepted being shot in the foot and still thinks himself the best sprinter for the next race. Repeating the past never works against a determined foe whose only cunning and hope resides in easily circumventing the few straight strategies of keystone cop Dem planners. nervous, stubborn, bewildered, angry at suggestions. Snapping out, incredibly at the only real allies that share common goals worth a damn. Relying on the fact that his personal mandate remains stronger than Carter's with no challenger to THAT anywhere in the GOP muck.

Considering his lame competition he could probably win on his knees, and since he is on his knees to corporate desires the feet don't matter anyway. Of course this would be bad for anyone who thought such actions good for the country, but he has clearly shown his mind too moving directions, not even hidden it with skillful political deception. Against the New Deal, for Reagan, puzzled over the scope of failure, human suffering and lack of help from his corporate deals, blaming those with alternate ideas before during and after huge sellouts to the fake void of GOP bipartisanship. Populism does not reside is weaning GOP voters away from their nothing of a party by empowering both the RW leadership and the discredited disaster of a rapacious agenda.

Playing weak defense to the ever hostile fraudulent media, Corporate Pravda, is the entertaining pathos of the bewildered self-victim on the way to the unimaginable fall from power. Surely the lunacy of the fatuous, scary and empty GOP alternative is enough? So keep going. There is no cliff. There is no cliff on this path. Close your eyes, it's even easier and less distracting.

You can bet the AP will start reporting that "fearful some Dem leaders" are privately saying, "some nervous key advisers" are secretly admitting they are in trouble. A non-constructive, insidious stupidity that might be fictional, self-fulfilling or just plain true. Like the war, like the economic grinding, it is one more surrender of our lives, rights, jobs, homes, health because the fear only is that their 100% corporate committed path is not working. In the end the champs will slink back to their mansions or onto MSM TV screens to comment and relive their cowardly, silly roles as if they were something else. We go broke, get sick, sent off to corporate wars or hopeless mob actions, grow bitter, hopeless, old and die. Preceded by the completely shamed sham of America, a puzzling mistake of a name in itself.

[OhioChick]

19. He better check the polls...it WILL be the biggest issue

Are you discouraged by the job market?

87.5%
Yes, there aren't enough jobs out there

http://business.newsvine.com/_news/2011/07/08/7041276-are-you-discouraged-by-the-job-market

[daa]

26. Repugs think they were elected to cut the deficit and that is

wrong, it was because the dems didn't create jobs and address the economy. It is deja vu only think time Obama and the repugs will pay. Boner is already beating up Obama about JOBS and all Obama can say is it won't matter in 2012.

[chill_wind]

20. Incredibly out of touch.

Digby likens it to George Bush Senior with the scanner in the supermarket.

He needs to get out more. The feeling of angst and fear across the land is directly tied to the fact that unemployemnt is high. People know it and except for the political class, heriesses, CEOs and Wall Street traders, even if they are currently employed they are personally experiencing it in their inability to get a raise, change jobs, move up, sell their houses,start a business or get a loan. People are stuck,unable to make a change, seeing the future they had planned just fade away as they adjust to a flat economy with no dynamism and no end in sight. Happy talk isn't going to do it.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

The Labor Department reported the U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest this year, from 9.1 percent in May. Employers added 18,000 workers in June, the fewest in nine months.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-08/obama-says-jobs-data-show-u-s-has-long-way-to-go-in-boosting-employment.html

More from Digby:

Since World War II, no U.S. president has won re-election with a jobless rate above 6 percent, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who faced 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day in 1984. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg puts the unemployment rate at 8.2 percent in the third quarter of next year.

Simply saying it won't matter is not winning campaign strategy.

[lynne]

22. If this is the true advice that the President is getting -

- then we just need to pack it up and stop. The election is already lost. Unemployment and the economy will be the ONE AND ONLY key in 2012.

To even jest that its not important is so out of touch that its insulting.

[Cass]

23. Gee whiz, talk about tone deaf. They really don't get it, do they?

It may not be important to them but it sure is important to the rest of us living in reality and it damn well will be a factor in the election.

[Kablooie]

24. Who are these imbeciles Obama picked as advisors?

The election will be about whatever the GOP says it's about. They will attack and the Dems will defend.
Unemployment is the biggest immediate problem that affects people's daily life so of course that's what it will be about.

Maybe it should be about how the GOP got us into this mess and want to make it worse but it won't be.
Dems rarely attack. They just wait to be attacked and spend their energies trying to deflect the slime.

[stockholmer]

25. looking like a one-termer more & more each day, unless(& this I DREAD)there is a truly large war or

false flag terror attack. The seeds for both are being sown with vigour.