As Hillary Clinton leaves the State Department, after four successful and accomplished years as Secretary of State, her public opinion rating is at an all time high, 67 percent. She goes off to a well deserved rest, and a possible run for President in 2016, with the Republican Party hoping she will not run, as they know very well that they would have an extremely difficult time defeating her, if she was the Democratic Presidential nominee!
As Hillary leaves in triumph, our President, Barack Obama, has reached a peak of popularity, now reaching 60 percent, and his agenda, including gun regulation and immigration reform at the forefront, along with the continued creation of jobs and a hoped for budget deal in the next few months, is making him look at his strongest point since he was first elected in 2008.
The Republican Party is floundering badly, and all we see are Tea Party radicals, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas makes fools of themselves, and also witness Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina go on the attack against a former colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who they once were friends with, as he seeks to bring a new direction in the Pentagon. Their vindictiveness and nastiness is appalling, and diminishes both Senators immensely!
The Republican Party is mired in 26 percent support, and while they complain about the economy, a readjusted set of results for November and December shows greater growth in jobs than expected, and housing starts are up, and the stock market just today went over 14,000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the highest since October 2007!
So the Democrats, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton have a lot to be proud of, while the Republicans are demonstrating they have learned nothing from their defeat.. Their future is gloomy, until and when they realize that they must repudiate the Tea Party Movement and the extreme right wing.
The country is rapidly becoming more “Blue”, and once Arizona, Texas and Georgia become so, which seems inevitable by the next decade, the Republican Party will be unable to recover and gain government control and win the White House.
This country is not what they wish it to be–Southern, rural, white, and old. Instead, the Atlantic and Pacific Coastlines and the Great Lakes Region, urban and suburban areas, diverse population of all races, and young, and also women, are the future, and they are going “Blue” by leaps and bounds!
I think it’s kind of silly and counterproductive to be constantly wondering who is going to run in 2016 or not like the media seems to be so fixated on. Sure everyone wonders and nothing wrong with speculation but we have more important issues in the here and now to be worrying about and devoting our energy to. A big reason that Hillary has stayed so popular since her Husband finished his second term in office is because she was in the public eye as a senator and then Sec of State, but she is leaving it now for a while and I have a hard time believing she will be as popular four years from now as she is right now. Plus didn’t they say that she would not be able to travel like she has been anymore? The President needs to be able to go places when he needs to and if she really can’t travel that freely anymore it would be wrong for her to run in the first place. I don’t know I might be remembering incorrectly, I stopped paying attention when they said she would be okay lol
Personally I find it really horrible how low McCain has sunk to the point he will openly stab people in the back he used to call a friend, especially on the subject of a war that the person he is attacking also served in, especially because both the wars he is making a fuss about are not relevant issues Hagel will deal with as Sec of Defense. It’s like asking Barack Obama how he will handle the civil war, it’s ridiculous.
I used to at least respect Mcain but it’s becoming harder and harder for me to maintain that.
Ali, the President travels, but not a million miles in four years, as Hillary has, so the travel issue would not be a real problem.
I already, at the beginning of January, had a blog entry that predicted that Hillary will not run for President. I also wonder if Joe Biden would be able to run the course at age 74, or would choose to do so.
Much more likely is, as I have stated elsewhere, Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, or Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, among others. And I really like O’Malley a lot, while also liking Warren and Klobuchar as well!
McCain is a bitter old man, past his prime, who should have retired in 2010, but knowing his ego, he will probably run again in 2016, when he is 80. That is part of the reason why he is pushing so hard for gaining Hispanic-Latino support, because Arizona is turning blue very rapidly.
Still though once you have had one health issue like that it doesn’t take much to have another, especially considering the stress of the presidency being probably several times more intense than that of being Sec of State.
But I am more interested really to see how Kerry will be different now that he is Sec of State and how he will handle the job. I would love to hear the media speculating about that more especially considering it is a more relevant issue at the moment.
I have a heard a little bit about O’Malley and the others you mentioned from time to time, and from what I know of them I like. I kind of just wish Hillary would come out and say it within the next year if she plans to run or not so people who would not run if she was going to do so, can start preparing.
I also think it’s kind of silly how the more the economy recovers the more the GOP tries to claim the world is going to end lol
The Republican Party is living in denial, plain and simple!
I agree about Hillary’s health, and said so in that blog entry at the beginning of January, and the thought of her having stress starting two years from now for the next ten, theoretically, from age 67 to age 77, seems something no sane person would want!
I think Hillary needs to come out and announce her intentions sometime in 2014 at the latest, as does Joe Biden. But, somehow, I think other candidates will not let Hillary or Joe stop them in their ambitions, in any case.
It will be interesting to see John Kerry, who could have finished eight years shaping foreign policy as President, instead contributing to it as Secretary of State, a man who has been an expert on foreign relations for years, and has been head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and can speak multiple languages. What an intellectual guy, a stark comparison to George W. Bush, but then Al Gore was and is very intellectual as well, and makes Bush look what he is, not very bright at all!
Well said Professor! 🙂
Professor do you see a Kerry run for the president in the future?
No, Kerry will be 70 this year, and had his chance eight years ago. There is NO possibility of him running at almost age 74, and we already have Joe Biden, who will be 74, and Hillary Clinton who will be 6, in 2016. Enough of the old timers! LOL
The number of Americans not in the labor force grew by 169,000 in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released jobs numbers for January this Friday showing that non-farm payroll employment increased by 157,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent. The nation’s unemployment rate increased a tenth of a point in January, rising to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent, a level the Labor Department described as “essentially unchanged.” So the unemployment rose, yet we seem not to hear the same fuss as went it went down a tenth of a percent!
Lost in these headline numbers was another rise in the number of people not in the labor force. This number now stands at a staggering 89 million, up from 80.5 million when President Obama took office. This means that there are currently 8.5 million more Americans not in the labor force than just four years ago. Unemployment would have been worse had not even more adults — 169,000 — chosen to join the ranks of those neither working nor seeking employment.
BLS labels people who are unemployed and no longer looking for work as “not in the labor force,†including people who have retired on schedule, taken early retirement, or simply given up looking for work. There were 89 million of them last month. The number of people not in the labor force had declined in December to 88.8 million from 88.9 million in November.
In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, most of the reduction in unemployment from its 10.0 percent peak in October 2009 has been accomplished through a significant drop in the percentage of adults working or looking for work. Were adult labor-force participation the same today, the unemployment rate would be 9.9 percent and were the participation rate the same as when U.S. President Barack Obama took office it would be more than 10 percent.
Adding in part-time workers who would prefer full employment but can’t find it, the unemployment rate becomes 14.4 percent. It rose to more than 14 percent in the wake of the financial crisis and remains stuck there.
Convincing millions of Americans they don’t want a job or compelling desperate workers to settle for part time work has been the Obama administration’s most effective jobs program.
This continued explosion of people not in the labor force should be tremendously concerning as it represents an obstacle for the government to ever balance the budget without drastically raising taxes on those still working.
Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Juan, you act as if this is all due to Barack Obama, when the Republicans in the House and Senate have done NOTHING to promote job growth, and their goal is to make for more unemployment, including cuts in government jobs, when what we need is a WPA, CCC, and PWA, as under the New Deal of FDR. But no, instead, the goal is austerity, which has failed miserably in Great Britain, and all over Europe. What has Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, etc said or done on this matter? It needs to be a COOPERATIVE venture, Juan, to help solve the unemployment issue in America. And remember, Obama inherited the WORST economic situation since 1933, and over 6 million jobs have been created. Certainly not enough, but more than John McCain and Sarah Palin would have brought about, as neither has ever cared about economic matters, with McCain only wanting to bomb every nation in the world, and Palin just concerned about her ability to make money on no brains or intelligence!
The GOP goal is to make for more unemployment??? Was it not Nancy Pelosi who said unemployment creates jobs?? See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUAG3Fqz56s .
Who always wants to extend unemployment benefits and who gutted the work requirement for receiving welfare?
Austerity? We do not have austerity! And who talks about austerity? The only austerity we currently have is the private sector being drained by the public sector. We want the private sector to have more disposable income. We do not want austerity. The problem is that statist believe that if government reduces just a few points its planned spending hike , we then have a cut! There was, is and will not be any real cuts under the Obama administration.
According to monthly spending data from the Treasury Dept., total federal spending — which includes transfer payments and other federal outlays not counted by the BEA — increased by $98 billion in Q4 compared with Q3. And spending was up $31 billion when compared with Q4 2011.
For the entire year, spending in 2012 was virtually unchanged from 2011, and was up $86 billion over 2010, a year when the government was still spending stimulus money in earnest. See: http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts1212.pdf
Plus, the “fiscal cliff” deal worked out between President Obama and the Republicans actually added almost $50 billion to planned spending in 2013, and a total of $332 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. See: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/American%20Taxpayer%20Relief%20Act.pdf
Almost half of the 2013 increase will go to pay extended unemployment benefits, which Democrats have long argued are highly stimulative.
Reid himself has said that unemployment benefits “help our economy because recipients spend the cash they receive on the things they need right away.”
In addition, even if the “sequester” should go through, federal spending will continue to climb. Thus, there are no Real ‘Cuts’.
In fact, if nothing else changes, spending in 2013 will be $3.6 trillion, an increase of nearly 2% over 2012, according to data from the CBO. That’s because the sequester’s “cuts” are actually just reductions in planned spending hikes.
So with all this spending, with all this stimulus, the economy declined, shrunk by -0.1% in the Q4. We have had miserable economic growth over the last 4 years in spite of spending trillions and $5 more trillion in debt. See: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2013/pdf/gdp4q12_adv.pdf
This is an interesting chart which illustrates the “net” jobs gains per Presidency since 1948, the severity of the unemployment and the unemployment rate and the end of the tenure.
Source BLS : http://www.politicalmathblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Job-Gains-By-Presidential-Tenure-Large.jpg
Exactly right Professor. The GOP is more interested in what we women do with our vaginas than helping people get good paying jobs.
Juan, you conveniently ignore the fact that all of these Presidents came into office with a better economy than when Obama entered the Presidency, the worst entrance economically since FDR in 1933. Assuredly, by the time he leaves office in January 2017, we will see vigorous economic growth and job gains, after coming out of the deepest hole in 80 years, again as with FDR’s time, caused by Republican Presidents (Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush).
I hope we don’t come out with FDR record after 8yrs with high unemployment and economic depression. You know as well as I that FDR was just another Hoover statist policies on steroids. As a matter of fact you know that FDR ran his campaign against Hoovers taxes and government intervention. He later changed and went on overdrive with those same policies he criticized. And you know what Morgenthau said after 8yrs.. they tried everything and that nothing worked.
You now that Bush also had stimulus checks go out, you know he intervened and bailed out companies, and that Bush grew government..and we also know that Obama went on steroids with his stimulus, the bailout and intervention. In other words, if Bush and Congress in 8yrs overspent and added $4 trillion to the debt he had already inherited, how is it that we are going to conclude that spending more and adding $5 trillion to the debt in half the time is somehow going to make things better? It has not and will not, in 8yrs unfortunately unemployment will not go down, more people will be out of the labor force, and the debt crisis will explode on our laps.
I would add one more thing, it is not as you say , again as FDR caused by Republican President, actually caused by big government interventionist Republican Presidents. Republican or Democrat ,doesn’t matter if they are both big government spenders and interventionist.
It is interesting how no one in the GOP, or very few, complained while Bush was President. And the standard view of Hoover is that he was a conservative, but now conservatives have repudiated him big time, and made him out to be FDR before FDR, when Hoover bitterly opposed FDR on everything, and was a well known conservative opponent of the New Deal and Democratic ideas for the last 30 years of his life. Interesting how we are “rewriting” history for convenience! Sounds like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel et al in action, assisted by non historians, who claim to be historians, such as David Barton!
Who the hell is David Barton? You keep confusing conservative/classical liberals with “moderate Republicans” who are also pro-big government. If Hoover ever complained against the New Deal, it was because it went further than he did. That is the problem when you violate a principle, for however small, once you violate it, there is no going back. Hoover was no Calvin Coolidge. Same with Bush, he bailed out companies, grew government, spent money on stimulus check and ended up giving carte-blanche to Obama. Now Republican moderate establishment types like McCain, Graham and the rest of course did not complained about Bush’s spending and intervention, how could they if they despised Reagan? And back then there were few Reagan-conservatives in Congress if any within the Republican Party, to complain. But Conservatives did complain, I even remember Tony Snow, rest his soul, complaining –
-Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc. – 03/17/06
-“On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries.†– 08/25/00
This is just a refresher of how Reagan-conservatives/classical liberals criticized Bush for his spending. Thus, it is not only logical but appropriate that we criticize the biggest spender in human history, President Obama. To do otherwise would be inconsistent.
George Bush was no conservative. You should have read back in 2006 this book, ” Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, no relation to White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, is a conservative true believer. He served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and is a respected conservative economist and policy analyst. (He was ultimately fired from the conservative think tank where he worked for his Bush criticism.) The central critique of Bartlett’s book is that George Bush has betrayed Reagan conservatism. Government spending has exploded during his presidency and Bush is unbothered. Instead of shrinking entitlements, Bush pushed through a bloated and inefficient Medicare prescription drug program. The book highlights the consensus conservative critique of the moment: By expanding government and using it to reform society and feed middle-class self-interest, Bush has watered down the conservative movement beyond all recognition. The debate is no longer about what kind of government we’ll have but which brand we’ll choose: Republican big government vs. Democratic big government. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385518277/sr=8-1/qid=1140563088/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8404529-4197537?_encoding=UTF8
Look up David Barton, a Christian conservative who has distorted American history tremendously, and has had an effect on Texas, which means the nation when it comes to public school textbooks on history.
Yes, the Coolidge revival is coming, but it is based on emptiness. Amity Shlaes is coming out with a book favoring Coolidge, but he still stands out as one of the worst Presidents ever, and his economic policies helped to lead to the Great Depression, with him being smart enough (although he was not smart), to ditch the Presidency before the Crash of 1929.
The fact that Reagan tried to honor him and praise him shows the equal emptiness of both Coolidge and Reagan, who both presided over the greatest maldistribution of wealth in American history.
And what is wrong with Head Start, which has done a lot of good at low cost for a government program, and given necessary concern to help save ghetto and poor children, by early intervention?
And Bruce Bartlett has condemned the GOP of 2012, calling them loony and out of the mainstream of American politics. He has mourned the turn in the GOP toward the Tea Party Radicals who want to bring back the America of the past, and they are dangerous to the stability of the nation!
So? One does not have to agree on everything Bartlett writes. He was right in 2006 about Bush, but he is wrong today. Terribly wrong. Bartlett, is the fair-weather supply-sider who recently converted to Keynesianism, and he has embarrassed himself by launching an intellectually dishonest smear of the Tea Party movement. Intellectually dishonest academics and left-wing propagandists in the news media continually paint a false picture of the movement, solely for the purpose of advancing their own failed ideology. Mr. Bartlett’s is just one more in this strategy. Mr. Bartlett made the following false claims citing a faux research”study” from The University of Washington:
” What I think this shows is that taxes and spending are not by any means the only issues that define [Tea Party movement] members; they are largely united in being unsympathetic to African Americans, militant in their hostility toward illegal immigrants, and very conservative socially. At a minimum, these data throw cold water on the view that the [Tea Party movement] is essentially libertarian. Based on these data, I would say that [Tea Party movement] members have much more in common with social conservatives that welcome government intervention as long as it’s in support of their agenda.”
So eager is Bartlett to smear the Tea Party movement that he hangs his entire argument on this transparently “rigged” study conducted by Christopher Parker, a researcher whose body of work is so suspect he’s spent nine years languishing as an assistant professor. Parker is the type of academic who has built a career creating data that will support his biased conclusions. His most recent co-authored academic publication, A Black Man in the White House? The Role of Racism and Patriotism in the 2008 Presidential Election was so flawed that even Professor Henry Gates’ left-wing DuBois Review (Spring 2009 edition) has removed it from its web archives due to “editorial errors.”
From its inception in February 2009, the Tea Party movement has focused on three core values: (1) constitutionally limited government, (2) free markets, and (3) fiscal responsibility. These core values emerged quickly during the dramatic two-month period in early 2009 when the movement first exploded on the scene. As if from nowhere, Rick Santelli’s rant on February 19, 2009 started an unlikely chain of events that brought one million Americans — many first-time activists — to nine hundred “Tax Day Tea Parties” around the country on April 15, 2009.
The Tea Party movement has rejected the discussion of social issues as an unwanted distraction that will hurt the movement’s ability to accomplish its constitutional and fiscal objectives.
Tea party activists, whether they govern their private lives by faith in God or by a purely secular morality, are united in their concern about the loss of individual rights stemming from our corrupted Constitution and our corrupt system of representation. They are dedicated to restoring the purity of our original constitutional system in order to pass on the republic intact to the next generation of Americans.
The social issues that motivated the Moral Majority in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, are considered secondary to the preservation of the republic. The common attitude among tea party activists is that we should save the republic first, and then let traditionalists and non-traditionalists duke it out over the social issues as they see fit within the confines of the saved republic.
Now, as always, you seem to always change the subject. We went from Bush and your claim that he wasn’t criticized by conservatives and jumped to the Tea Party when I just named a few who did criticized Bush and described him as a Big Government Republican. Good grief!
Professor,
“Classic liberal” is the mantra of the Ludwig von Mises school of thought. They want to bring back the gold standard; probably think that the 16th, 17th and maybe even the 19th amendment were bad things along with the Federal Reserve.
As you mentioned, they want to turn back the clock to the good old days of the Gilded Age.
Paul,
I call them Regressives.
The Tea Party Movement is trying to bring us back to the 18th century, when the Founding Fathers themselves inserted in the Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, which is the Elastic Clause, allowing for the concept that governments have to change and adapt to changing times. The Founding Fathers did not believe in a rigid, inflexible document, and would be appalled at the “Know Nothing”, ignorant view of the Tea Party activists who want to restore an America that will never return, a white Christian Puritanical view of life that subjugated women and minorities, and promoted monopoly capitalism. That is why Progressivism and the New Deal and Great Society came along as necessary reform movements to promote equality and justice and opportunity for all!
Ron – are you trying to attribute the recent run up in the stock market to who’s sitting in the Oval Office?
Actually, the stock market movement upward is a manifestation of many factors, but as we know, Presidents are judged by economic statistics, as if they order and set up their situation that exists during their years in office. So Presidents are given credit or blame for the times they preside over. With the stock market having doubled, and all jobs lost in the Great Recession recovered in the number involved so far, and continued expansion beginning, it is clear that by the time Barack Obama leaves office, millions of new jobs, beyond the 6 million recovered and some gained, will have occurred. Considering the horrible situation that existed when Obama took office, the worst since 1933, that will be seen as a major accomplishment, and right now, it is in process for the next four years.
Doubled? The Dow was at 7,949 when Bush left office and now it’s at 14,000. Last time I checked it didn’t double. Unless you ignore the free fall it took right after Obama took office that March and start from there, but that would be cherry picking the numbers. But either way, an investment bank could implode tomorrow causing the market to plunge 25% and I wouldn’t be blaming that on Obama.
I am talking about the low it reached, but even if not doubled, it went up about 75 percent, an all time record, I believe, for any President in one term. Not bad, considering he has been bitterly attacked at having nothing good accomplished economically, when we have gotten out of the hole he inherited, and over 6 million jobs later, we are finally looking up in job creation. Glad you would not blame a future collapse on Obama, but many Republicans would be sure to do so!
Much of the stock market run up is due to QE1, QE2, QE3, etc. Not necessarily a good thing, with the Fed creating another bubble like it did with housing.
As for employment, if you include all of the people who have exited the work force over the last couple years, do you really think the employment picture has improved versus a few years ago? We’ve seen much bigger snap backs in employment and GDP in other recoveries
You are correct on the instability of the employment market, but again, this Great Recession was the worst since the Great Depression 80 years ago, and after such a shock, it take time and patience for a full recovery. Of course, that is tough for those affected, but it reflects reality on the ground. And it would have been no different under a President McCain.
Stop making excuses – I didn’t even bring up McCain. That may or may not be true. We’ll never know. But nobody in Washington seems focused on economic growth.
You and I are both old enough to remember the late 70’s and early 80’s. Awful job environment but we bounced out of it much more strongly than what we’ve seen over last couple years.
You must remember, Hoopster, that we did not have a split Congress in the Carter years, and when we had a Democratic House under Tip O Neill with Reagan for six years, despite their rivalry, things got done. That is not the case with this GOP House and the Tea Party Movement. And again, this has been the worst economic downturn in 80 years, far worse than the mid 1970s!
Ah yes, it’s the GOP’s fault for nothing getting done in a split Congress. Ha ha ha
Why are the early Obama years worse than the early Reagan years? Both had high single digit unemployment, bad GDP declines, etc
Yes, Hoopster, as the GOP House refused to cooperate in 2011 and 2012 on anything, while the Democrats did work with Reagan on many issues when they controlled the House from 1981-87. You may not accept that, but they are the facts. And actually, the Reagan Recession of 1981-82 reached the highest percentage unemployment ever since 1939, 10,8 percent, as compared to a high of 10.2 percent under Obama and 9 percent under Ford in 1975.
Both refused to do anything that the other side wanted to do.
Exactly right, Professor. Compromise is the backbone of our government and the GOP is not doing so.