There was real growth and real recovery in the U.S. economy the second half of 1983.
July - Sept. '83: 5.8%
Oct. - Dec. '83: 7.8%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RO1Q156NBEA
But if jobs were slow in coming back, and they often are in a recovery and I'd like to look up the specifics of this one, maybe the feeling that for all their privileges, corporations aren't really playing ball.
Jesse comes through as a sensible moderate: Corporations are the engine of the whole system. They are a force of nature. They are amoral, which is scarier than being immoral. But they are simply there, again as a force of nature. And here's the important thing --- we can bend the path.
That is, Jesse comes across as very bold in pointing to uncomfortable facts and surprisingly moderate in talking about remedy.
that's my general approach, but which quarter has the anemic 0.2?
Something like this could have easily been done in 1984 and '85.If You Make $47,476 A Year Or Less, You’ll Be Eligible For Overtime Pay
Self Magazine, Nina Bahadur, May 18, 2016.
http://www.self.com/trending/2016/0...r-or-less-youll-be-eligible-for-overtime-pay/
' . . . The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over 12.5 million workers who currently aren’t eligible for overtime pay will be eligible after the rule changes. These workers, 6.4 million of whom are women and 4.2 million of whom are parents, . . . '
The Reckoning, David Halberstam, 1986, page 50:
https://books.google.com/books?id=n...mall truck with copies of the Sunday"&f=false
' . . . In 1982 the two out-of-town papers that sold best in Detroit were the two Houston papers, the Post and the Chronicle, bought eagerly by men desperate to study the help-wanted columns. One unemployed auto executive, seeking to keep himself afloat financially, started driving to Houston each weekend; there, on Saturday night, he loaded up his small truck with copies of the Sunday papers and then drove all night back to Detroit in order to get there first and sell his papers at highly inflated rates. . . '
If more of these stories circulated at the time, people might focus on more economic facts than simply the federal deficit.page 51:
' . . . When a department store needing two hundred workers was ready to open, it too never had to advertise. Somehow the word got out that the company was ready to process applications, and eighteen hundred people showed up. . . '
Halberstam makes the case that cheap oil built the American middle class. And that this period had to end sometime, and was brought to an abrupt end with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.The Reckoning, David Halberstam, 1986, pages 54-55:
' . . . The postwar years, the immense material strength and physical might, two generations of unrivaled prosperity—it all had lulled America into thinking it had attained an economic utopia, a kind of guaranteed national prosperity, like a concession won in some marathon bargaining session with God, a guaranteed annual increase in the standard of living. In those few postwar decades, American had taken a temporary historical accident and construed it as a permanent condition. . . . '
I doubt that there were even enough people open to voting for Jackson in a general election at all whether it be 1984 or 1988. The racial factor was very powerful plus the fact that he is too left for the American electorate barring perhaps a second Great Depression.
Has the 2012 presidential election had the same demographics as OTL elections in 1984 or 1988, Obama's performance would've been better than Mondale's 1984 performance but somewhere closer around Carter's 1980 or Dukakis' 1988 performances OTL. With a 1976 or 1980 demographic makeup, Obama's 2012 performance would have been closer to McGovern's in 1972 but slightly better.
It is worth mentioning that in the 1980's, the people that came of age during the civil rights era were just getting to voting age and were a very small percentage of the voting population. By 2008, the remainder that had yet to reach voting age during the civil rights era had not only reached voting age but had entered early middle age which made them more likely to vote. Conversely, those that had come of age during the height of Jim Crow were dying off. This combined with Bush's disastrous performance plus Obama not being leftist (Tea Party whining aside) allowed him to win in 2008.
The question is this? Is there any confluence of factors that allows for a Bush vs. Jackson matchup where Bush wouldn't have 270+ electoral votes virtually guaranteed from the get go?