Pres. Obama’s popularity with working-class white Americans increasingly grows during presidency?

[GeographyDude]

Now, one method might be if it starts low and then has nowhere to go but up!

But I’m thinking more in terms that Obama is successful both politically and in terms of policy.

Your ideas, please.

 

[GeographyDude]

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/

Notice that from 1971 to 2015 the highest brackets grew faster than the lowest brackets. So, this is good, right? Well, it all depends how tolerant you are of income inequality.

This chart defines middle-class as ranging between 2/3’s the median income and 2X the median income.

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Much Later Edit:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/

Largely the same, a little different.

In the five years from 2011 to 2016, one percentage point drops from upper income to middle class.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/

The Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey was conducted from January 2016 to December 2016. Respondents were asked to report their income received in the 12 months before the survey date.

Self-report data. This gives me greater pause. Yes, even if we consider that with a large number of people mistakes are likely to cancel out, it still gives me pause. For example, during an economic downturn, more people are going to peg their income on their last job and/or the job they expect to get soon, which unfortunately in a downturn, may be a little slow in coming.

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[Sam R.]

The problem with using income brackets as a proxy for class segment ideology is that the link is through reproduction at work and wage labour.

If proletarians think the purpose of nominal social democracy is to keep them down (as a result of their collective praxic learning at work) they will detest policies sold as social liberal, progressive or social democratic.

In part the firm level provision of welfare in a full employment promise is the problem: almost exactly the same concrete problem as regards the former Soviet proletariat; but with more square metres of housing, meat and cars.

What he could give was unwanted, what was wanted could not be given.

Yours,
Sam R.

 

[Anacostia Pol]

Now, one method might be if it starts low and then has nowhere to go but up!

But I’m thinking more in terms that Obama is successful both politically and in terms of policy.

Your ideas, please.

If he pursues Wall Street’s recklessness at the beginning of his term as people believed he would it might do him some justice. A piece of legislation that barred any financial institution that received federal loans from compensating its executives X number of dollars until their debts were repaid could help. There’s a lot he could do with the banks, and he could’ve also have been bolder when it came to healthcare, but those weren’t the political instincts of Barack Obama. He is for the most part conciliatory, and always willing to cut a deal. You need a Barack Obama with people telling him to listen to the Occupy crowd before they morphed into the Tea Party once and for all.

 

[Chapman]

If he pursues Wall Street’s recklessness at the beginning of his term as people believed he would it might do him some justice. A piece of legislation that barred any financial institution that received federal loans from compensating its executives X number of dollars until their debts were repaid could help. There’s a lot he could do with the banks, and he could’ve also have been bolder when it came to healthcare, but those weren’t the political instincts of Barack Obama. He is for the most part conciliatory, and always willing to cut a deal. You need a Barack Obama with people telling him to listen to the Occupy crowd before they morphed into the Tea Party once and for all.

Mostly agreed with this. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, though, because for as many people who wanted him to go hard in the wake of the financial collapse, just as many were screaming about Obama's impending "socialism." While he might have picked up some support, building anything from it is going to require more focus on grassroots activism through the Democratic Party; which is a big part of where (IMHO) Obama failed. He didn't really pick up on the momentum and energy coming from "the Occupy crowd", probably due to exactly what you pointed out, being his conciliatory nature. He tried to please both sides, and ultimately, wound up alienating both.

On the one hand, a more aggressive President Obama just might've worked. On the other, it could've made things worse; giving the Tea Party and the like more ammo to use against him, making him look even worse. But I don't see any other realistic way to at least try and raise his support with this group, aside from surviving (or, not surviving - although that might just defeat the purpose) an assassination attempt.

 

[Wallet]

When the stimulus was passed in 2009, most Americans were expecting new roads built from massive job programs like the New Deal. Most people OTL felt like they didn't actually see how the stimulus was spent.

Here are the POD. Mitt Romney is the nominee in 2008. John Edward scandle comes out sooner before the primaries. With his votrs split, Obama wins New Hampshire and Nevada, Hillary drops out. Without the bad blood, Obama/Hillary win Georgia, Montana, Arizonia, and Missouri. Harold Ford wins in 2006, Mitch McConnell loses in 2008, Al Franken wins on election night in 2008, and Scott Brown loses in 2009.

Democrats have a 62 seat majority and pass a larger stimulus which is used more wisely when it comes to public relations, so more roads and work programs. Democrats also pass single payer. They also break up the big banks and punish wall street. Also, Osama Bin Laden is killed before the midterms. Democrats keep both houses of congress until 2014, losing the house.

Thoughts?

 

[Some Bloke]

Pass laws protecting wages and workers' rights?

 

[GeographyDude]

October 16, 1996

The Second Clinton-Dole Presidential Debate

http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-16-1996-debate-transcript

.

.

MR. BURNS: My name is Duane Burns. I'm a martial arts instructor and a father. Mr. President, could you outline any plans you have to expand the Family Leave Act?

.

.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was a gem. It was surprisingly popular for seemingly such a small improvement, I think because it was simple and straightforward and can probably still be included on one-half of one piece of paper. It was signed by President Clinton early in his presidency on Feb. 5, 1993.

Could President Obama have had a similar gem or two early in his presidency?

 

[GeographyDude]

And yes, I do have an idea. It's what we almost got in Dec. 2016 — that if you make less than $47,000 for the year, you get time-and-a-half for overtime whether you're classified as salaried or hourly. This would keep large retail outfits from abusing and overworking their assistant managers, and a number of other job situations. It builds on what we already have with overtime law. Basically, it would close a loophole that companies have been using.

And it would help spread out available jobs.

 

[GeographyDude]

. . . If proletarians think the purpose of nominal social democracy is to keep them down (as a result of their collective praxic learning at work) they will detest policies sold as social liberal, progressive or social democratic. . .

Could you please elaborate on this with an example or two.

 

[Wallet]

And yes, I do have an idea. It's what we almost got in Dec. 2016 — that if you make less than $47,000 for the year, you get time-and-a-half for overtime whether you're classified as salaried or hourly. This would keep large retail outfits from abusing and overworking their assistant managers, and a number of other job situations. It builds on what we already have with overtime law. Basically, it would close a loophole that companies have been using.

And it would help spread out available jobs.

Well, they did here in Tennessee. I was working in retail.

What the company did was they just made the assistant managers hourly, and cut their hours to 38-39 hours a week when payroll was low. The assistant managers complained that because they were hourly, their pay could be cut to below 40 instead of being guaranteed 40 hours.

 

[GeographyDude]

. . . He tried to please both sides, and ultimately, wound up alienating both. . .

But in many life areas, isn't something like this a good thing. For example, if the editor of a major medical journal is covering the controversy whether long-term antibiotics (and concurrent anti-inflammatories) are needed in treating Lyme disease, isn't it a sign of success if both sides feel they haven't really gotten their just due? And we could come up with many similar examples.

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Later edit:

I’ve read that steroids can re-activate syphilis (syphilis also being a tricky spirochete just like Lyme).

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

He punishes wall street and makes the US healthcare system closer to a developed nation. That'd help.

 

[GeographyDude]

Well, they did here in Tennessee. I was working in retail.

What the company did was they just made the assistant managers hourly, and cut their hours to 38-39 hours a week when payroll was low. . .

And with the inconsistent income, it's harder to get a car loan, or if they were paying some real money and/or housing prices were more reasonable, a mortgage for a home. Yes, I can see how this is a definite problem.

I've still had the experience of being classified as a "manager" and expected to work 60 hours a week. Perhaps you have also. This is one reason I think nothing can really take the place of a good overall economy in which companies are scrambling to hire dependable workers and have an actual incentive to treat these workers right.

 

[GeographyDude]

from Time magazine Nov. 24, 2008

Obama should have played the FDR card more directly and more often, including saying "FDR," "New Deal," and "President Franklin Roosevelt" in his first Inaugural address. This is something many Americans are very familiar with, very comfortable with, and generally pretty much like (of course, not every American, economic libertarians over-represented on the Internet are a counter-example, etc).

Problem: You don't want to add weight to the Great Recession sliding into Depression by self-fulfilling prophecy type of statements. And the economy did continue to get worse till June 2009, at which time it started to recovery. And job recovery lagged.

So you make statements of the sort, We aren't going to slip into a depression and we're going to make doubly sure because we're going to cut taxes including a cut on withholding to put immediate money into people's pockets to juice the economy [think Obama and Congress did this]. We are going to ramp up infrastructure, and people need to understand that's going to take a little time and most of the jobs created will be temporary [many people believe in infrastructure so much I think you have to make a conscious effort to point out the negatives and limitations]

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

A POD to get a Barack Obama willing to think about working class issues would most likely require him to either divorce Michelle or never marry her, in favor of someone else less ah ambitious/focused on getting into the upper-middle class.

 

[Sam R.]

. . . If proletarians think the purpose of nominal social democracy is to keep them down (as a result of their collective praxic learning at work) they will detest policies sold as social liberal, progressive or social democratic. . .

Could you please elaborate on this with an example or two.

The general premise is:

All forms of wage labour society will result in alienation in the technical economic sense of lack of control over labour, output, production in general. This includes "social democratic" institutions.

For example:

When the United Auto Workers union plays a repressive role through enforcing contracts that are seen to favour the boss by line workers, line workers occasionally engage in non-union wildcat strikes that exceed the social democratic type demands of the UAW and extend towards communistic demands. IIRC the journal Radical Amerika has an article on this from the 1970s.

When the US federal and state governments train workers to believe that medicaid is crap, inefficient, complex and humiliating, the attitude towards extending government supply of health services will be that it will be an extension of suffering to a new plane of hell, incidentally deleting any company run health system that there may be some level of trust in.

yours,
Sam R.

 

[GeographyDude]

If he pursues Wall Street’s recklessness at the beginning of his term as people believed he would . . .

But the stimulus legislation Obama signed in Feb. ‘09 did include restrictions on executive compensation over and above that which was included in Bush’s TARP.

And yet, not just you by any means, but the vast majority of people just don’t focus on this at all. And I think many people don’t even know this.

It may have been somewhat successful as policy (although I have my doubts), but it fails in political terms.

https://books.google.com/books?id=f...timulus "executive compensation" 2009&f=false

 

[GeographyDude]

https://books.google.com/books?id=f...timulus "executive compensation" 2009&f=false

And please notice the title of this book: Too Big To Save?

This may be the only thing scarier than “too big to fail”

 

[Anacostia Pol]

But the stimulus legislation Obama signed in Feb. ‘09 did include restrictions on executive compensation over and above that which was included in Bush’s TARP.

And yet, not just you by any means, but the vast majority of people just don’t focus on this at all. And I think many people don’t even know this.

It may have been somewhat successful as policy (although I have my doubts), but it fails in political terms.

https://books.google.com/books?id=fi_X9mYQ754C&pg=PA292&dq=stimulus+"executive+compensation"+2009&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQjJy9maTbAhXLzIMKHV47CegQ6AEILjAC#v=onepage&q=stimulus "executive compensation" 2009&f=false

Wall Street execs and the big bank bosses were says by they got off scot free to countless outlets. They knew there was more that Congress and the Obama White House could’ve done, like using the Dodd-Frank laws to break up the banks, but that’s not what happened at all.