Romney's Video And Why Much More Needs To Be Said About It
I don't think I ever brought it up on this blog, but last year at this time when the Republican primaries were taking form, I commented on other online forums that I suspected the Republican party disconnect from where the public is on the bread and butter issues ("offering nothing but additional risk in a nation pleading for security" was a line I frequently used) just might allow President Obama to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in a highly unfavorable political climate. Specifically, I said that I believed that the talking point that is article of faith in the right-wing media, spouted 50 times a day on every newspaper forum across America, would go mainstream and really put Republicans in a box. That talking point was that "nearly half the country pays no taxes". And while I knew that the Republican establishment would have a mess on their hands if this dubious commentary ever became front and center in the political dialogue, never could I have imagined that the party's nominee would directly make the comment himself, and in the most vicious, cartoonish context possible.
Romney is rightly getting slapped around by all corners of the media for his vile commentary on that video, and the media is doing a generally good job of getting the message out that Republican policies are largely responsible for the numbers of Americans with no "skin in the game" when it comes to the federal income tax....and the fact that likely Romney voters (white working class families with a lot of kids living in Middle America) represent something very close to a majority of those who pay no income taxes. But I still think the video only helps Obama and the Democrats at the margins because the voters who most need to hear the real story won't hear it....and I don't believe the message that most needs to get out based on Romney's diatribe will get out at all.
On the first point, the voters who most need to hear the pushback related to Romney's comments tend to be low-information working-class voters, who tend to be the very people Romney is sneering at but who don't even know it. The genius of Romney trashing the "government dependent 47% of the country that he doesn't care about" is that Joe Sixpack driving forklift at the Wal-Mart distribution center and Jill Sixpack waiting tables think he's talking about the mythical welfare queens in Detroit, or even in their own neighborhoods for that matter. For the guy or gal busting their asses to put food on the table at 50% what their parents made doing the same kind of work a generation ago, it's understandably easy to resent those who don't work for their money. And it's also easy for them to imagine based on perceptions at the checkout line that Romney's fantasy is based on reality...and that 47% of the country is sitting around on the couch all day collecting checks in the mail rather than working. But the actual number of Americans living like this, even in the midst of our brutal recessionary job market, is extremely small. Still, to whatever extent white working class Americans even hear about Romney's dismissive video commentary amidst their busy lives, their reaction is likely to be "right on!" rather than "you entitled bastard!" Even though these are the very people taking advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit or the $1,000-per-child tax deductions that leads them to paying no income tax, they don't and won't make the connection that Romney is talking about them when he derides the "47%"....unless of course they are prolific news consumers who will learn some of the aforementioned details....but few likely are. And because he doesn't want to be seen as making excuses for deadbeats, Obama and his campaign are unlikely to fully litigate this either.
Moving to my second point, there's a direct line between how Mitt Romney conducted his business career and the rising tide of government dependency among the working class.....but for all the analysis of the video in the last five days, virtually nobody has made this case. Here we have a guy who spent his entire adult life making hundreds of millions of dollars as a corporate hit man, slashing people's wages and stealing their pensions in the interest of consolidating economic resources into the hands of investors and plutocrats.....and then when the spoils of this loss of livelihood leads the prey to seek relief from the government to fill the substantial void, he has the "brass" to accuse them of "not caring for their own lives". What a bastard! Again though, don't expect the Obama campaign to pick up on this as they don't want to offend their own corporate campaign contributors at this late hour when they need those big fat campaign checks most. It still burns me that for all the flack Romney is taking for his monstrous comments, he's ultimately getting away with them if nobody publicly calls him out for having his own hands covered with blood being at the forefront of changing the economy to its current configuration where never in American history has there been a smaller financial reward for work.
If this was a sane country with a sane electorate, Romney's comments would have him trailing in the polls by 40 points right now. The good news is that leading indications point to the video having some negative impact on Romney's fortunes but the election even today looks poised to be many points closer than it should be. Democrats should have ripped this "half the country is a bunch of freeloaders" comment out of the ground by its roots and laid bare the inconvenient truths Romney neglected to mention. But since they didn't, it's long-term political impact won't be as profound. The entire political conversation in America should have changed as a result of this video blowing this right-wing meme wide-open, but it seems unlikely to go that far, which is a huge lost opportunity for both Democrats and the future of the republic as we slide ever closer to oligarchy.
Romney is rightly getting slapped around by all corners of the media for his vile commentary on that video, and the media is doing a generally good job of getting the message out that Republican policies are largely responsible for the numbers of Americans with no "skin in the game" when it comes to the federal income tax....and the fact that likely Romney voters (white working class families with a lot of kids living in Middle America) represent something very close to a majority of those who pay no income taxes. But I still think the video only helps Obama and the Democrats at the margins because the voters who most need to hear the real story won't hear it....and I don't believe the message that most needs to get out based on Romney's diatribe will get out at all.
On the first point, the voters who most need to hear the pushback related to Romney's comments tend to be low-information working-class voters, who tend to be the very people Romney is sneering at but who don't even know it. The genius of Romney trashing the "government dependent 47% of the country that he doesn't care about" is that Joe Sixpack driving forklift at the Wal-Mart distribution center and Jill Sixpack waiting tables think he's talking about the mythical welfare queens in Detroit, or even in their own neighborhoods for that matter. For the guy or gal busting their asses to put food on the table at 50% what their parents made doing the same kind of work a generation ago, it's understandably easy to resent those who don't work for their money. And it's also easy for them to imagine based on perceptions at the checkout line that Romney's fantasy is based on reality...and that 47% of the country is sitting around on the couch all day collecting checks in the mail rather than working. But the actual number of Americans living like this, even in the midst of our brutal recessionary job market, is extremely small. Still, to whatever extent white working class Americans even hear about Romney's dismissive video commentary amidst their busy lives, their reaction is likely to be "right on!" rather than "you entitled bastard!" Even though these are the very people taking advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit or the $1,000-per-child tax deductions that leads them to paying no income tax, they don't and won't make the connection that Romney is talking about them when he derides the "47%"....unless of course they are prolific news consumers who will learn some of the aforementioned details....but few likely are. And because he doesn't want to be seen as making excuses for deadbeats, Obama and his campaign are unlikely to fully litigate this either.
Moving to my second point, there's a direct line between how Mitt Romney conducted his business career and the rising tide of government dependency among the working class.....but for all the analysis of the video in the last five days, virtually nobody has made this case. Here we have a guy who spent his entire adult life making hundreds of millions of dollars as a corporate hit man, slashing people's wages and stealing their pensions in the interest of consolidating economic resources into the hands of investors and plutocrats.....and then when the spoils of this loss of livelihood leads the prey to seek relief from the government to fill the substantial void, he has the "brass" to accuse them of "not caring for their own lives". What a bastard! Again though, don't expect the Obama campaign to pick up on this as they don't want to offend their own corporate campaign contributors at this late hour when they need those big fat campaign checks most. It still burns me that for all the flack Romney is taking for his monstrous comments, he's ultimately getting away with them if nobody publicly calls him out for having his own hands covered with blood being at the forefront of changing the economy to its current configuration where never in American history has there been a smaller financial reward for work.
If this was a sane country with a sane electorate, Romney's comments would have him trailing in the polls by 40 points right now. The good news is that leading indications point to the video having some negative impact on Romney's fortunes but the election even today looks poised to be many points closer than it should be. Democrats should have ripped this "half the country is a bunch of freeloaders" comment out of the ground by its roots and laid bare the inconvenient truths Romney neglected to mention. But since they didn't, it's long-term political impact won't be as profound. The entire political conversation in America should have changed as a result of this video blowing this right-wing meme wide-open, but it seems unlikely to go that far, which is a huge lost opportunity for both Democrats and the future of the republic as we slide ever closer to oligarchy.
posted by Mark at 2:42 PM
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