Are the American people spoiled? Yes we are. Are the American people impatient? Yes we are. Are the American people kneejerk and self-destructive? Absolutely.
So what exactly about Gene Robinson's tough-love column today was inaccurate?
Adam Serwer, filling in for Greg Sargent, takes issue with Robinson:
But it's silly to blame the American people for reacting to the results of Democratic governance. Unemployment edged up to 9.6 percent, the economy losing 54,000 jobs. As Neil Irwin reports today, "The current pace of job creation is too weak to put Americans back to work in significant numbers." There's no mystery as to why Americans aren't dancing in the streets. A better argument might be that Democrats are being "spoiled," since it's their lack of enthusiasm about voting that is giving the GOP a major advantage.
Adam is great, but he's very wrong here. He's suggesting that the unemployment rate and the bad economy are the consequences of "Democratic governance." Really? I thought all of this crap was the result of 30 years of Reaganomics and deregulation. And even if Adam is writing in the voice of the American people who falsely believe this is all the Democrats' fault, why reinforce that obvious inaccuracy? Frankly, it's something Mark Halperin or one of the other hackish villagers would do.
Adam continues:
Had Democrats pushed for a bigger stimulus or been successful in getting more legislation passed that would get the economy going, the president's approval rating and that generic ballot would look very different.
I'm not so sure. First of all, there's no way of knowing whether a bigger stimulus would have even passed this Congress. Secondly, many of the independents who are swinging Republican this cycle are doing so because of the economy, but also because of what they perceive to be too much spending.
Above all, I don't think Robinson was being unsympathetic about the jobs situation. He was just outlining the fact that we're about to make things worse by voting for and electing a Republican Congress for the wrong reasons. How is this inaccurate? Will the Republican Congress help the unemployed? If anything they're going to create more unemployed people when they shut down the government and spend the balance of the 112th Congress investigating the president's underpants. Voting for such a thing is stupid, regardless of whether you're working or not.