As bad as the unemployment problem in the US is right now, it’d probably be at least 1.6 million jobs worse if McCain/Palin had won last November.

The Republican approach to fixing economic problems is basically this: “Do nothing and eventually the market will correct itself.” This is exactly what Republican Herbert Hoover did from 1929 through 1932. To say it didn’t work would be an understatement. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to turn the country around with this “New Deal.”

And since people so closely associated the Great Depression with the Republicans, they had little hope of scuttling FDR’s plans. Unfortunately these days people have a short memory and it’s like some folks have already forgotten that our current economic woes came to be under the “leadership” of George W. Bush and company.

The truth is, as bad as things are now, they’d be a lot worse with a Republican President. Look at this chart on the private sector job creation under Democratic and Republican Presidents over the last 50 years. The pattern is obvious, Democratic Presidents are better for the economy.

Obama’s approach has already saved or created over one million jobs and because of his leadership this country is headed in the right direction. With McCain/Palin in the White House unemployment would likely be over 12% by now (it’s currently at 10%.)

Watch this report on ABC News with Charlie Gibson on some of the jobs being created with the President’s stimulus plan:

Despite the President’s approval ratings slipping below 50% for the first time recently, Obama still leads his potential 2012 GOP challengers in head to head match-ups in a new set of PPP polls:

Obama 49% Mike Huckabee 44%
Obama 48% Mitt Romney 43%
Obama 51% Sarah Palin 43%
Obama 46% Ron Paul 38%

The winner of the Health Care Reform Video Challenge has been announced:

The media seems far more focused on Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney seems to be seen as “next in line” for the Republican nomination but the latest Gallup polling shows Mike Huckabee may actually be the 2012 front runner at this point (a full 3 years from the 2012 general election!)

According to this poll 71% of Republicans say they would “seriously consider” supporting Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination. Comparatively Mitt Romney & Sarah Palin are both at 65%, Newt Gingrich is at 60%, and Tim Pawlenty is at 32% (this is probably due to having lower name recognition than the others.)

In bad news for the Republicans; none of these candidates has much support among the general electorate with only 40% saying they would “seriously consider” supporting Mike Huckabee for President (obviously his opponent is assumed to be President Obama) with 51% saying they would not consider (I’m not sure what the other 9% are saying?) Meanwhile Romney is at 39% and Palin is at 33% among the general electorate. Considering that Romney and Palin are already very well known, that seems to indicate that they would have a very hard time winning in 2012.

A lot of the talking head political pundits (both Republican operatives and so-called “journalists”) are trying to spin the story that the Republican wins of the Virginia & New Jersey Governor races has something to do with President Obama and the national Republican party (that it somehow spells big wins for them in 2010.)

But why would this be the case? Do Governor races generally have anything to do with national politics or not? The answer is clearly that they do not have anything to do with national politics. All it takes is a simple look at the recent histories of Governor races in Virginia and New Jersey to see that quite obviously (which makes one wonder if these idiot pundits do even the most basic research?)

In 2001 when George W. Bush had a sky high approval rating over 80% (post 9/11) both Virginia & New Jersey went for a Democratic Governor. Did those elections have anything to do with Bush? No, obviously not. And did they foretell any Democratic sweeps in 2002 or 2004? No, clearly not.

So why would these elections be any different?

In fact the last nine times Virginia has voted for a Governor (including tonight) it has voted for the candidate whose party does not control the White House. Nine times in a row! So why is this time suddenly supposed to say something about the President? Did it say something about Reagan when Virginia voted for a Democratic Governor twice during his Presidency? No, I don’t think so. Did it say something about Clinton when Virginia voted for a Republican Governor twice during his Presidency? No, obviously not.

So why would it suddenly say something about Obama for a Republican to win while he in office? Why would that make any sense at all? How is it that there are supposedly informed people on cable television making that claim tonight? That’s just shockingly stupid.

I’ve also heard the claim that’s a huge deal that New Jersey voted for a Republican Governor since it’s such a blue state but of course New Jersey had a Republican Governor throughout most of the ’90s (Christine Whitman) and certainly other very blue states have voted for Republican Governors in recent history (Schwarzenegger in California, Pataki in New York, & Romney in Massachusetts for three obvious examples.) So it’s not really that unusual at all.

So while many on the right are trying to make a big deal out of these two Republican wins in these Governor races which tend to have nothing to do with national politics, the Democrats actually won both of the congressional races (in New York & California.) Most impressively they won NY-23 for the first time since the 1800s.

And even more interesting than the Democratic party winning this seat for the first time in ages is how they won it. Really, it was more the Republicans that lost it with their infighting. The Republicans would have almost definitely won the seat but some “conservatives” (ie: right wing nutjobs) decided that the Republican candidate wasn’t “conservative enough” so they ran a Glenn Beck approved candidate named Doug Hoffman in the general election and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and other far right wing political figures endorsed him.

Eventually the moderate Republican dropped out of the race which the teabagging crew applauded at first because they thought her votes would go to Hoffman so he could beat Owens. But instead she ended up endorsing the Democrat and tonight the results are in: Bill Owens won NY-23 for the Democrats for the first time since the 1800s.

I think the Democratic party would welcome a lot more of this teabagging stuff! I think they’re hoping they go to Florida and take out Charlie Crist next.

I bought Renegade: The Making of a President by Richard Wolffe over the weekend and I’m finding it quite fascinating thus far (I’m on page 105.) It’s a close-up look at the 2008 Presidential campaign from the perspective of Barack Obama and his team and as someone who followed the 2008 election extremely closely (I have a blog devoted to the topic) it’s really interesting to read what was going on “behind the scenes” of all of these things that I remember clearly (but from another perspective, of course.)

Beyond the campaign talk, there’s also some interesting background on Obama that makes me feel like I know who he is a bit more and where he’s coming from. I think a lot of us on the left (I am very liberal, far to the left of where Obama presents himself politically) get upset with the President not pushing harder for big changes but I really do believe that he is on our side, it’s just that he’s also very much a pragmatist and that he believes what matters most are results (not ideological purity.)

I think we should try to be a bit patient with him while simultaneously pushing as hard as we can for the changes we believe in. Many times in the book the point is made that Obama believes that change really comes from the “bottom up.” In other words, that we have to push for change if we want it to happen, we can’t just sit back and expect the politicians to do what’s right on their own. Corruption is very deep in Washington and I think we’re all living in a fantasy land if we expect Obama to be able to just change everything with a wave of his wand.

This book was released on June 2 but there are a couple of new books focused on the 2008 election coming out this week: David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win (Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager) comes out on November 3 and, of course, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, which will likely be the first book many Palin fans have ever read, comes out on November 17th.

For years Fox “News” has been mislabeling their right wing propaganda as “news” and they are now finally being called out on what they really are (a part of the Republican party) by the Obama administration.

Watch this video and consider whether this is how a real news organization would act. They’ve been constantly attacking President Obama every day since he became President (and of course during the campaign too, but it’s got even worse since he got in the White House.)

Former President Clinton absolutely destroying the right wing propaganda of Fox News back in 2004:

Why is this relevant today? Well as you have probably heard, the Obama administration has come out strong recently in saying the obvious: Fox News is not a genuine news organization but instead are the “communications department of the Republican party.”

That video from 2004 is to show that former President Clinton felt the same way and that he had no reservations in calling them out on their bias.

To keep up with the latest lies coming from Fox News I recommend checking out MediaMatters.org, I also recommend the documentary Outfoxed which details the right wing bias of Fox News.

Why should President Obama have to clean up the Republican mess all by himself? Why don’t the Republicans grab a mob and get to work cleaning up Bush’s mess too? It seems like all they can do is complain about everything Obama does and try to get our country to go back to the policies that gave us all of these problems in the first place!

Video of President Obama telling the GOP to “Grab A Mob!”.

For comparison’s sake, the Democratic party has a 57% favorable rating and President Obama is at 77% among this age group.

This poll spells long term doom for the Republican party. The young people of today have completely rejected the politics of the right wing. And as the older people who buy into their ludicrous hate/fear-mongering die off their electoral prospects will continue to dwindle as those born after 1980 (who reject them so soundly) make up more and more of the electorate.

For now the Republican party is a regional party (only viable in the South) but eventually their support will likely dwindle to just the most far right conservative states like Utah.

Unless of course they decide to completely ditch the social conservatives and move in a more moderate direction (including supporting health care reform and anything else that is obviously right instead of just being against everything positive in the reactionary way that they are now.) Perhaps then they can come back from the dead. But there doesn’t seem to be any sign of that as of now.