The Dangers of Perception

There is a saying that one’s perception of reality can be just as dangerous as reality. Last week’s midterm elections are proof positive to that point.

 

Despite six years of Republican obstructionism that has wreaked havoc on the nation, voters in several states rewarded the petulant children that make up the GOP with a resounding victory that gave Republicans the U.S. Senate and expanded the Republican majority in the U.S. House.

Journalists and the pundit class have offered several post-mortems on the elections, and there will be many more such pieces down the road. So far, several things appear clear: Most people have no idea what they are talking about, and too many rely on conventional wisdom without realizing that wisdom is anything but conventional.

If the exit polls are correct and many people voted for the Republicans because they are displeased with the direction in which the nation is headed or because they feel government is not working, then we must ask in exactly which direction do the voters wish the country to go and what makes them think the dysfunction that is the GOP will cease to exist come January?

Despite the sabotage from Republicans and the dire, “sky-is-falling” warnings from their sycophants the economy is doing remarkably well. Preliminary jobs numbers released by the U.S. Department of Labor last week showed that the nation created 214,000 jobs in October. That means the nation has gained an average of 235,000 jobs a month for the last six months. The averages are 224,000 over the last three months, and 220,000 over the last 12 months. The October numbers marked the 56^th month of job gains. In addition, the unemployment rate dipped to 5.8 percent in October, and, more important, the four-week average for unemployment claims hit a 14-year-low the previous week.

The good news does not stop there. Bankruptcies were down 13 percent for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30; gas prices are below $3; the third quarter gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent; the budget deficit has dropped to 2.8 percent of GDP; the Dow keeps setting records; and the labor force actually grew.

Of course, there is some bad news to go with the good news. Most revealing is that wages continue to be stagnant, although many business leaders and economists say the continued reduction in the unemployment rate should provide upward pressure on wages. And as Daily Beast writer Michael Tomasky reported on Nov. 6, median household income fell each year from 2009 to 2012. While it grew to $52,100 in June 2013, the growth is not enough to make up for the losses American households have endured since 2000 when median household incomes dropped to $55,987 after hitting a peak of $56,080 in 1999 under President Bill Clinton.

So what does all that have to do with the midterm elections?

Apparently very little because according to some exit polls 78 percent of those who voted on Nov. 4 felt that the country is headed in the wrong direction economically. Such a number says either the voters who responded to those exit polls were not being totally truthful, or that they are extremely ignorant of current events. Both may actually be true.

Because if a lack of faith in the direction of the economy and a disdain for dysfunctional government were the motivators for voters then why would Republicans win? It was Republicans who blocked a vote to increase the minimum wage, an issue that passed ballot initiatives even in states that voted for Republican legislatures and governors.  It also were Republicans who blocked efforts to help jump start the economy by improving the nation’s infrastructure, something nearly all agree must be done eventually. Most important, it was Republicans who took the nation hostage, shutting down the government in an effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act and threatening default during the debt ceiling brinksmanship.

As Paul Krugman wrote in a Nov. 6 post on The New York Times web site:

“…the biggest secret of the Republican triumph surely lies in the discovery that obstructionism bordering on sabotage is a winning political strategy. From Day 1 of the Obama administration, [Mitch] McConnell and his colleagues have done everything they could to undermine effective policy, in particular blocking every effort to do the obvious thing — boost infrastructure spending — in a time of low interest rates and high unemployment.

“This was, it turned out, bad for America but good for Republicans. Most voters don’t know much about policy details, nor do they understand the legislative process. So all they saw was that the man in the White House wasn’t delivering prosperity — and they punished his party.”

Apparently, some pundits are just as clueless. David Brooks of The New York Times and Dana Millbank of the Washington Post each offered his take on the election.

In his Nov. 6 post on The New York Times website, Brooks basically argued that the Republican Party’s massive victory on Nov. 4 occurred because the party had grown up, that its leaders had pulled “back from the fever swamps” that followed the injection of Sarah Palin and the like onto the national stage. The key, according to Brooks, was that Republicans returned to their stalwart roots.

“Republicans didn’t establish this dominant position because they are unrepresentative outsiders,” Brooks proclaimed after reciting Republican gains. “They did it because they have deep roots in four of the dominant institutions of American society: the business community, the military, the church, and civic organizations.”

In support of his argument, he offered up several examples: Larry Hogan, who won the governor’s race in Maryland; David Perdue, who was elected to the Senate from Georgia; Thom Tillis, who was elected senator in North Carolina; Bruce Rauner, who was elected governor in Illinois; and James Lankford, the Senator-elect from Oklahoma who ran “the nation’s largest Christian camp.”

Of course Brooks did not mention, for example, that Rauner has been accused of questionable practices in how his private equity firm, GTCR, has handled Illinois’ pension fund, which Rauner now says cannot pay retirees the promised nearly $2,500 a month in benefits. Brooks also does not mention that Tillis championed the 2011 North Carolina bill that would have forced women seeking abortions to view an ultrasound against their wills. Brooks also did not mention several other extreme candidates, including Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Millbank, in his Nov. 5 post to the Washington Post web site, simply decided the real problem was that President Obama did not humble himself after the midterm election, that he did not take serious the idiocy of an American electorate that gave control of the government and economy to the very same people who wrecked it six years ago, an electorate that passed a referendum calling for a hike in the minimum wage while electing people who have vowed to fight any such increase.

That Republicans have spent the last six years rejecting all of the President’s overtures in an effort to embarrass him is of no consequence to Millbank. To Millbank, the fact that an exit poll showed that 33 percent of the voters who responded said their vote was to show disapproval of Obama was all that mattered. Apparently Millbank did not notice that 47 percent of the American electorate voted against Obama in 2012, or that if 33 percent said they wanted to show disapproval of the President that would also suggest that 67 percent had other reasons for voting as they did.

Simply, there is no single reason why Democrats were trounced during this year’s midterm elections. There appears to have been several factors involved – a lack of understanding of the political process, an aversion to facts, low voter turnout, a party ashamed of its leader – and many of those things may not be easily fixed. That is the reality, and it is froth with as much danger as the one many perceive.