This morning, White House senior adviser to the president David Plouffe found himself in some hot water for comments that seemed to suggest he didn't think voters would care about jobs during the next election. At the time, I wrote the following, and I still think my analysis is correct:
I suspect Plouffe is playing the same card that top Obama advisers played to convince the President not to support a real stimulus. The economy is going to get better soon, the argument went at the time, so no need for a stimulus the size of which Krugman, Stiglitz and Obama's own economics adviser said we needed. They're hoping the same failed argument works on unemployment. Or perhaps Plouffe reflects a different thinking inside the White House, that voters actually care about the deficit and will reward the President for reaching a "historic" deal to garotte Social Security and Medicare, just like George Bush wanted, even though far too many of their family members are still unemployed or underemployed.Greg Sargent has posted the rest of the transcript of the interview, which does seem to suggest that Plouffe was not saying "who cares about jobs?" but rather, "unemployment won't be a big problem by the time the election rolls around" (my words, not his). Greg's interpretation of Plouffe's meaning is that people won't pay attention to the actual unemployment rate number, but rather their own sense of how they and their family are doing (though Greg doesn't necessarily agree with Plouffe's underlying point). I still think that suggests that Plouffe believes unemployment won't be bad by the time of the election.
I'm not sure I agree with Plouffe (if that is what he meant). If unemployment is still 9-point-something in November of 2012, two things are going to be true. One, people will have heard so often that unemployment is unbearably high that they're going to believe it, regardless of their own personal situation (but only to a degree). Second, if unemployment is still that high, I refuse to believe that people won't either be themselves, or know family and friends who are, under- and un- employed. It's not like the unemployment rate has nothing to do with the number of unemployed.
I'd also argue with another larger point Plouffe seems to be making. That things are getting better. No they're not. As Krugman is constantly reminding us: Things are no longer getting worse, but they're not really getting better. My income is 1/3 of what it was. And it's only marginally gotten better of late, but just barely. And the joke of it is, I have people coming to me for money because I'm the one who's supposedly doing well! I have a relative who lost their business of some ten or twenty years, only to be unemployed for a year, and then finally, at age 60, found a job selling cars for two thousand bucks a month, which, where they live, and with a family, isn't a lot. I have other relatives who have had to up their work hours, and travel, to a ridiculous degree just to make ends meet - meaning, just barely paying the mortgage, making the car payment, etc., juggling all the bills. Other relatives who had to sell their homes to be able to continue affording supporting their kids because the work still hasn't come back.
Things are barely better out there. So yes, if we want to be overly legalistic about it, the unemployment rate got worse by .1 while the situation with me and people I know back home got better by .1 -- that's nothing to write home about. And from what we hear form Krugman and Stiglitz, who have been uniformly ignored by the White House while being uniformly right about just about everything, things aren't going to be so great next year, the year after that, the year after that, and the year after that (and then some).
Plouffe's comments, to me, were dismissive of the unemployment rate as an indicator of, well, employment in America. And to an extent he's right, but in the wrong way. More people are unemployed and underemployed than are shown in the 9.2% rate. But to suggest that things are actually better out there for voters than the 9.2% suggests - or they'll be significantly better next year - I think that's out of touch with what everyone outside of the administration is telling us, and I think it sounds out of touch.
