Call your friends in Massachusetts and tell them:

more on Brown v. Coakley (4.00 / 1)

I agree with this: Dem predicament in Massachusetts about failure to change economic conditions, not ideological angst.

For all the things Obama has gotten right in his first year, his economic team did underestimate the economic problems.

Why was the stimulus underpowered? A number of economists (myself included) called for a stimulus substantially bigger than the one the administration ended up proposing. According to The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, however, in December 2008 Mr. Obama's top economic and political advisers concluded that a bigger stimulus was neither economically necessary nor politically feasible.

Their political judgment may or may not have been correct; their economic judgment obviously wasn't. Whatever led to this misjudgment, however, it wasn't failure to focus on the issue: in late 2008 and early 2009 the Obama team was focused on little else. The administration wasn't distracted; it was just wrong.

There's time to fix this--or, at least, make it less worse--by November. Whatever the outcome, tomorrow should be a political wake-up call for the Obama administration (and the Dem congress) to deal much more aggressively with reducing unemployment.

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by: Clem Guttata @ Mon Jan 18, 2010 at 23:31:21 PM UTC

12:18PM on CSPAN Wash. Journal replay (4.00 / 1)

Someone from W. Va. volunteered to call Mass. voters for Brown. He said that there was some reaction to his accent. I bet.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Tue Jan 19, 2010 at 17:21:50 PM UTC

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