17% of the American workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. More than seven million people have lost their jobs since this recession began, in an economy that needs to add more than 100,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. This situation affects not only those who are looking for work and cannot find it, it also creates an atmosphere of fear among those who still have jobs, as they know that should they displease their employers in any way, they could be next. A pervasive culture of fear and uncertainty is emerging in America today, and it is quite likely that the Republican Party will be most successful in harnessing that fear and turning it into anger towards its political enemies and will dominate the 2010 election.
The Democratic and Republican parties are currently pursuing two radically different approaches to the current economic crisis. The Democratic leadership and the centrist, establishment media figures in New York and Washington are treating the economic crisis like a natural disaster. Few Democrats in Congress and no one at the White House seems interested in assigning blame, but rather they are focused on relief instead. They are engaged in a sort of triage, devoting resources according to urgency of need and perceived importance. The emphasis is on getting everything back to normal, i.e., restoring the economic/financial system back to what it was circa 2006 or so. Calls for punishment are largely dismissed as populist demagoguery, since "no one could have predicted that the system would collapse the way that it did". The current crisis is a "black swan", a freak occurrence, and while a bit more regulatory oversight may be warranted in the future, that is no reason to get angry with anyone over what was basically an unforeseeable accident. The government’s job is not to scapegoat anyone, it is just to provide needed assistance to vital financial institutions and to give some minimal help (e.g., extended unemployment benefits) to struggling citizens to help them tough it out until Wall Street is healthy enough to get the credit flowing again and thereby restore the nation’s economy. The Republicans are not responding to the economic crisis like it’s a natural disaster. They are treating it like an attack on the American middle class and encouraging Americans to get angry with those who are threatening them with bankruptcy and financial ruin. Of course, the Republicans can’t encourage people to blame those actually responsible for the economic collapse, since those are the people that the Republican Party exists to serve. However, the Republicans can provide white, middle class Americans who feel threatened by the current economic climate with other groups of people towards whom they can direct their fear, anger, and hostility. Blacks, immigrants, gays, and conspiracies by the Ivy League coastal elites make handy scapegoats. The willingness to scapegoat minorities or to indulge in conspiracy theories may seem absurd to Democratic Party elites, but pretending that the economic collapse was just a freak occurrence that no one could have foreseen seems just as absurd to many Americans. The unwillingness of Democratic leaders to point the finger of blame for the economic crisis at anyone just lends credence to Republican claims that it is key constituencies of the Democratic Party that are to blame for economic and financial meltdown. The absurd attempts by Democratic leaders to treat the collapse as an accident rather than a crime are being portrayed, by the Republicans, as evidence that the Democrats themselves are the criminals. The American people are being abused and made to live in a constant state of fear. The Democratic Party leaders are trying to persuade them that they keep getting punched in the nose every day by Wall Street on accident. The Republicans are working for the people throwing the punches and are telling Americans that they are actually getting punched by some black guy, or some Mexican, or some cabal of Nazi, Commie, Muslim liberals. However, they are at least offering the increasingly scared, angry and frustrated white middle and working classes someone to strike back at. The Democrats are telling them to just keep taking it on the nose until Wall Street regains its balance and quits accidentally falling into them fist first. Even the GOP will be hard-pressed to find candidates bat-shit crazy enough to lose to a message like that(although that won't stop them from trying), especially if the economy sheds a few million more jobs before the midterm election. If job losses continue and the U.S. slips into a double-dip recession before the midterms, even a party of delusional racists may seem more appealing to most Americans than the status quo. The one way the Democrats could innoculate themselves against future economic bad news is to give the American people an enemy to blame for the problems of the economy. If Obama were to declare war on the banksters and the "malefactors of great wealth" like FDR did, then he could give the American people someone to focus their anger on and give himself someone to blame for future economic setbacks. Unfortunately, he is too busy basking in the glow of the praise from the D.C. coctail party circuit for the wonderful jobless recovery and trying to pass a healthcare bill that doesn't offend United Health to prepare himself and his party for a political war over the economy in 2010.