It's Jobs, Stupid

Many of us devoted Democrats remember James Carville's famous line, "It's the economy, stupid." It explained why Americans were willing to ignore all of George H. W. Bush's achievements in foreign policy and vote for Bill Clinton, a relatively unknown Governor from Arkansas. The fact of the matter is that people who fear for their jobs will vote Obama out of office no matter how much they agree with everything else he hs done.

Barack Obama is turning out to be more like Bush than Clinton. Clinton did not accomplish nearly as much legislatively ax Bush and Obama, but he did deliver ecenomic and job growth. Obama has saved us from an economic meltdown, but he is learning that is learning that economic growth does not necessarily lead to job growth, and that could be the end of him.  

The simple answer to his problem is to increase regulations and duties on imported products. Everyone already does this. The developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) simply add taxes to everyone else's products. The Europeans do things like limit the amount of glycol that can be imported (for environmental reasons), restrict the engine emissions to a point that is feasible for German technology and not Chinese or Indian technology. Many countries require inspections that they do slowly and at a cost for imports that they don't require for domestic products. All of these things make exporting jobs to foreign manufacturing prohibitively expensive and force domestic manufacturers to make more capable products. These are all things that are feasible for the Obama administration if they stop acting like good global citizens and start focusing on jobs ... as if THEIR jobs depended on it.