Liberalism over the past week has been a real treat. Still stinging from their electoral massacre on Tuesday, progressives have blamed the voters, racism, democracy, anything to avoid taking a second look at their policies. The New York Times went so far as to recommend canceling the midterms altogether.
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But one of their arguments is worth addressing. Three days after the elections, the government released its latest economic numbers, and they weren’t too shabby. Unemployment dropped to 5.8 percent and employers added over 200,000 jobs for the ninth month in a row, the longest stretch since 1995. Meanwhile GDP galloped forward 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2014.
“There’s almost no economic measure where we are not doing better now,” declared President Obama before the election. “The economy’s improving and Democrats are getting none of the credit they deserve,” marveled Vox afterwards. And they have a point. Why, with economic indicators spinning upwards like the counter on a (now relatively cheap) gas pump, is the president not reaping the political benefits?
To solve this riddle, we need to examine liberalism itself.
There are two parallel strands within the modern progressive movement: a populist working class base and a technocratic elite that believes in scientific governance. The fusion of progressivism has meant using the techniques of the latter to meet the needs of the former. Hence the stimulus, a grab bag of goodies designed by wonks that was supposed to benefit the unemployed, labor unions, and various liberal constituencies.
The problem is that the wonks and the workers are living in two entirely different worlds. Wonks look at the economy with their cameras zoomed all the way out, measuring prosperity through metrics like GDP and the unemployment rate. Workers think in far more personal terms: their mortgages, their monthly bills, their retirement accounts. And right now the wonks’ data doesn’t match the workers’ data. Economic stagnation is real, but it isn’t registering in many of the official numbers.
There are several reasons for this. GDP, though cited by nearly everyone (including this writer on occasion), is actually a deeply flawed measurement that, among other problems, counts $1 of government spending as about $1.50 of growth. That’s why the economy supposedly grew like gangbusters last quarter: defense spending rose at its fastest pace since 2009 as America entered its third war in Iraq. But that’s deceptive: pumping money into the defense establishment isn’t going to lift all boats.
The unemployment rate seems peachy too. Yet even as jobs are being created, Americans are continuing to drop out of the workforce. The labor participation rate is currently at 62.7 percent, its lowest level since the 1970s. The U-6 unemployment rate, which also includes “marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons,” stands at 11.5 percent. A survey of employed recent college graduates found that nearly half were in jobs that didn’t require their degree.
Even those numbers don’t tell the whole story. On Tuesday Republicans picked up two unlikely governorships in the Democratic bastions of Massachusetts and Maryland. If you want to know why, stroll into a pub in Worcester or Cumberland and ask the guy sitting next to you how he’s doing. You’ll hear the same horror stories that you heard four years ago: family members who can’t find jobs, parents struggling to pay back-breaking tuition bills, college graduates stuck living with their parents.
My bar interview method would horrify progressive wonks, who prefer statistics over supposedly unreliable anecdotes. But in this case the statistics only hint at the truth—you need anecdotes to fully flesh them out. The Obama economy has been very lucrative for the federal government, corporations, lucky interest groups, Vox writers living in the cocoon of Washington, D.C. It’s been dismal for anyone who can’t influence policy or weather new regulatory costs or simply get a raise. Just ask them.
You can’t see that if you’re blinded by the statistical light. But if you’re a union member or an African American in the inner city, you live it every day. Even if you like Obama personally, you’re probably fed up with the economy, tired of hearing him blame Republicans, and questioning whether his policies really made a difference at all (aren’t gas prices low because of fracking?).
That’s why the Democratic base didn’t turn out to vote last week. And it’s why the GOP just might win big despite its electoral disadvantages in 2016.