Jobs and Money

One of John Kerry’s biggest blunders in his 2004 run for the White House, was his inability to explain simple concepts or provide simple answers. Another was his elitist manner when dealing with regular Americans. One might expect that Democrats would have dissected the loss to make sure they did not repeat the mistake. Apparently not, judging by this year’s showtunes from Donk 08. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are reprising Kerry’s role with all the Everyman skills of Thurston Howell the Third.

So, let’s lay it down. People worry about having enough money to pay their bills and keep their families fed and healthy. To get that money, they want staedy jobs, because real Americans work for their money. So, the natural question is just where the jobs are going to come from. Clinton and Obama are trolling around blaming job losses on Republicans, often on no evidence at all, but even with that gambit they are finding it hard to sway voters much. The reason is simple, I think – if you have a job, you would care about how to protect it, but if you have already lost your job, what you want to know is not who some politician wants you to blame, but how and when you will get your next job. You want to know what, exactly, this yahoo is going to do to get you work.

It seems hard to believe that a career politician in a thousand-dollar suit who has never sweated a layoff in his or her life, is going to understand (let alone address) the job market in a way that will matter to you in any real sense. The voters know politicians much better than the politicians know the voters.