Democrats Can’t See Good in the US Economy

“It’s the economy stupid” was the focus of the Bill Clinton 1992 campaign as managed by James Carville. Today, fifteen years later, I keep running into Democrats who claim the United States economy is terrible. If they cannot see reality, how will they come up with sensible policy prescriptions? For many Democrats, that doesn’t matter, as they are really interested in expanding the size and scope of government and enhancing their own political power.

Those who want to understand the economy should read New York Times Sunday, February 11, 2007 column by David Brooks “Who’s Afraid of the New Economy”?
■ Neopopulists, like former North Carolina Senator “John Edwards talks about the economy, you think he’s running for the Democratic nomination of 1932”.
■ “No Democrat today speaks … confidently about globalization and technological change”
■ The writers of the Third Way’s report ‘The New Rules Economy’ “challenge the neopopulists depiction of economic reality” and “expose what they call ‘the myths of neopopulism’”
■ “the myth of the failing middle class
■ “household’s headed by people in their prime working years, 25 to 59…median income is $61,000, if married is $ $72,000”
■ “Between 1979 and 2005, prime age households making over $100,000 in current dollars rose by 12.7 percent”
■ Myth “direst warnings about credit card debt (household assets have risen faster than debt)
■ “No nation on earth is better positioned to take advantage of an ever-more-open economy” than US
■ “Challenge is…enable more people to take part in it”

Third Way see http://www.third-way.com/ report “The New Rules Economy” to be released Monday, February 12th