Let's not shoot the messenger. Yes, the tea party victors are a mixed bag espousing often contradictory and at times weird positions, the source of their funding is questionable and their proposed solutions are vague and at times downright nutty. But they represent the most significant political response to the economic pain that has traumatized swaths of the nation at a time when so-called progressives have been reduced to abject impotence by their deference to a Democratic president.
Barack Obama deserved the rebuke he received at the polls for a failed economic policy that consisted of throwing trillions at Wall Street but getting nothing in return. His amen chorus in the media is quick to blame everyone but the president for his sharp reversal of fortunes. But it is not the fault of tea party Republicans that they responded to the rage out there over lost jobs and homes while the president remained indifferent to the many who are suffering.
At a time when, as a Washington Post poll reported last week, 53 percent
of Americans fear they can't make next month's mortgage or rent
payment, the president chirped inanely to Jon Stewart that his top
economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, who was paid $8 million by Wall
Street firms while advising candidate Obama, had done a "heckuva job" in
helping avoid another Great Depression.
What kind of consolation is
that for the 50 million Americans who have lost their homes or are
struggling to pay off mortgages that are "underwater"? The banks have
been made whole by the Fed, providing virtually interest-free money
while purchasing trillions of dollars of the banks' toxic assets. Yet
the financial industry response has been what Paul Volcker has called a
"liquidity trap"--denying loans for business investment or the
refinancing necessary to keep people in their homes.
Instead of meeting that crisis head-on with a temporary moratorium on housing foreclosures, as more than half of those surveyed by the Post wanted, the president summarily turned down that sensible proposal. Instead he attempted to shift the focus to his tepid health care reform and was surprised that many voters didn't think he did them a favor by locking them into insurance programs not governed by cost controls. Health care reform was viewed by many voters with the same disdain with which they reacted to the underfunded and unfocused stimulus program. Neither seems relevant to turning around an economy that a huge majority feels is getting worse, according to Election Day exit polls.
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