For Democrats: Reality bites; politics kills

When it comes to credit for a good (or bad) economy, which national party has a better track record — Republicans or Democrats?

Well, actually there have been a lot of studies on that. I think Jared Bernstein in this recent piece in the New York Times has the thoughtful and right answer: It’s too complex a question to reach any meaningful conclusion.

For example, he points out, “The interstate highway investments of Eisenhower (R) surely contributed to the productivity acceleration enjoyed by Kennedy (D).”

But while the long-term conclusions may be cloudy, Bernstein says, that’s not the case in the short term.

“It is glaringly obvious that complex, advanced economies need well-functioning federal governments that can accurately diagnose and prescribe; they need governments that can absorb factual information and respond to threats and opportunities. These requirements hold regardless of the president’s party, and the fact that we do not currently have such a federal government is without doubt what’s most important and most scary.”

That’s the reality Americans suffer through in the current Washington, D.C., of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and a gridlocked Congress.

And while the reality of that ineptness bites, the politics that stem from that will kill Democrats in the mid-term elections.

No better example of this than the new NBC poll that shows the president’s popular rating at 40% (an all-time low), Congress’ popularity at 14% and very little confidence among the American people that the current set of yahoos can get us out of the mess.

Get a load of these awful results: “76% of adults lack confidence that their children’s generation will have a better life than they do—an all-time high. Some 71% of adults think the country is on the wrong track, a leap of 8 points from a June survey, and 60% believe the U.S. is in a state of decline. What’s more, seven in 10 adults blamed the malaise more on Washington leaders than on any deeper economic trends, and 79% expressed some level of dissatisfaction with the American political system.”

Right or wrong, Democrats ran the show in Washington. And instead of tacking toward the political middle and working to build bi-partisan consensus, President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi moved hard to the left. They pushed through unpopular legislation like ObamaCare just because they could.

All the while the economy burned. Now, if these polls hold, they face the consequences.