Because It All Depends on the Jobs

"One in 10 Americans is unemployed." That's a headline we haven't seen in 26-1/2 years. But it's one we'll look back on with nostalgia a year from now if the Obama administration doesn't face reality and force Congress to pass a massive, all-jobs economic stimulus.

And if that stimulus doesn't pass before spring, it won't be Democrats' problem any more - repugs will take over Congress next November.

Paul Krugman and John Nichols make the case. First, Krugman:

Remember those Republican boasts that they would turn health care into President Obama’s Waterloo? Well, exit polls suggest that to the extent that health care was an issue in Tuesday’s elections, it worked in Democrats’ favor. But while health care won’t be Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, economic policy is starting to look like his Anzio.

SNIP

The World War II battle of Anzio was a classic example of the perils of being too cautious. Allied forces landed far behind enemy lines, catching their opponents by surprise. Instead of following up on this advantage, however, the American commander hunkered down in his beachhead — and soon found himself penned in by German forces on the surrounding hills, suffering heavy casualties.

The parallel with current economic policy runs as follows: early this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down.

SNIP

Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to have congealed around the view that budget deficits preclude any further fiscal stimulus — a view that’s all wrong on the economics, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Meanwhile, the Democratic base, so energized last year, has lost much of its passion, at least partly because the administration’s soft-touch approach to Wall Street has seemed to many like a betrayal of their ideals.

The president, then, having failed to exploit his early opportunities, is pinned down in his too-small beachhead.

If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.

And John Nichols in the Nation.

That's bad political news for President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress, who continue to make the mistake of treating unemployment as an afterthought rather than the most serious issue facing the nation.

Now that the United States has an official double-digit unemployment rate, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate need to adjust approaches in order to make job creation their primary focus.

SNIP

The reality of the 2010 congressional elections that will define the second half of Barack Obama's first term has yet to be determined.

But one thing is certain: If unemployment continues to rise, it will be the only issue in key congressional districts and states across the country next year.

Nothing else that the president or his congressional allies talk about will matter.

For economic, social and politic reasons, Democrats need to remake themselves as the party of jobs. If this requires a new stimulus plan with more money for job-creating infrastructure and development programs, Democrats cannot afford to be cautious. If this requires a radical alteration in trade policies and the abandonment of the absurd strategy for bailing out GM and Chrysler -- which calls for shuttering more than two dozen plants across the United States – Democrats cannot afford to hesitate.

... if Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their compatriots listen to the counsel of the cautious as unemployment hits 12, 13 or 14 percent, they will fail the American people doubly.

The first failure will be a social one. If unemployment is allowed to rise into the mid-teens, families and communities across this country will experience a human crisis of daunting proportions.

The second failure will be a political one. High unemployment will remake the electoral landscape into an "Alice-in-Wonderland" fantasyland. Republicans who (assisted by some notable Democratic allies) laid the foundations of the current crisis -- with misguided tax breaks for the rich, warped spending priorities and fundamentally-flaws trade policies -- will be able to position themselves as pro-jobs populists. And Democrats will be stuck defending an indefensible status quo.

That's a guaranteed loser for Obama and his congressional allies, who will see their House and Senate majorities slashed if not obliterated by an understandably angry electorate.