Is the Jobs bill just an act?

I'm growing a little weary of hearing people call the President's Jobs bill a stunt. It can't be passed, they say, the Republicans will never allow it, so what's the point of pushing it?

First off, never say never in politics. With enough public pressure, the Republicans will pass anything - and if they don't, they'll go down in flames the next election. So there's a always a point in trying, if the political math adds up. And in this case, it does. Just look at the ABC poll from this morning in which the President surged ahead of the GOP in terms of public trust on "jobs."

The turnaround in the polls didn't happen simply because it's a good proposal (and Krugman says it is). Lots of good ideas die with the public at the hands of the GOP disinformation juggernaut. No, I suspect the President, and his proposal, are doing better in the polls because this is one of the first times in a long time that the President fought back against the GOP, publicly, quite firmly, and relentlessly. Usually he does the backroom thing and, if anything, publicly extols the virtues of his proposal in the most generic of terms and only at the beginning of the negotiation.

This time he's publicly hitting back hard against the Republicans, and naming names.

And it's working.

More from BooMan Tribune:

Yet, the president isn't doing this all for show. He's trying to put pressure on Congress to do something about joblessness. It's only a political question because the opposition refuses to do anything to help people find jobs. How long are they going to persist in refusing to act?

Senior administration officials have warned reporters for the last month that Obama will be pushing the jobs bill long after the press has grown bored of hearing about it.

It will be at that point, the thinking goes, that Americans will have heard about it, embraced it and joined the president in calling for its passage.

The drumbeat is to pass the Jobs Bill. Everyone says it can't pass. The president thinks Congress should pass the bill right now and put 2 million people back to work. He's going to keep saying that and saying that, and, really, why shouldn't he? People want action on jobs and the Republicans want a bad economy for political reasons. If enough people come to understand this, they'll either force their representatives to act or replace them next November. If they don't come to understand this, they'll throw out the Democrats for being ineffective.