"The American People Are Smart!"...or are they...

“The American people are smart! They usually get it right.”

We hear this statement often in politics…usually uttered by politicians lobbying for an issue or trying to save their jobs. Most recently we heard it from Republicans after they were handed control of congress in the mid-terms. Republicans tell us that the mid-terms were a “repudiation of the failed policies of the Obama administration.”

“The American people are smart! They usually get it right.”

At the risk of getting myself into a great deal of trouble...no they are not...at least not in this particular case.

On Friday we received the latest jobs report. The numbers show that last month the economy produced 321,000 new private sector jobs. That makes 10 straight months of 200,000+ private sector job growth…57 straight months of positive job growth…. 10 million new private sector jobs since Obama took office. Economists worldwide trumpeted the results. “This is what a growing economy looks like” they said. Those same economists are projecting a 3% growth in the US economy in 2015.

Perhaps the most notable number in the report is that wages finally took an upturn; coming in at a 0.4% increase…double what economists had expected.

This is good…very, very good. Particularly when compared to the crumbling economy and 700,000/mo. in private sector job losses that the president inherited. Yet the American people voted to remove the Democratic Party that produced these results; handig the reins over to the Republican Party that did everything it could to stand in the way.

One of the leading pocket book issues that people fixate on is the price of gasoline. Remember when ISIS was barnstorming across Iraq gobbling up the country’s oil reserves. We saw gas prices spike in anticipation of a crude oil shortage. Republicans happily laid the blame on the “failed policies of the Obama administration.” The American people bought into the hype. Obama is to blame.

The President ordered military action against ISIS. The gas Iraqi oil reserves were secured. Now gas prices are plummeting; down 12 cents in the past two weeks alone. Some parts of the country are seeing prices at $1.99 per gallon. Does the president get any credit?

This is good…very, very good. Yet the American people voted to remove the party whose leader took the action that resulted on lower gas prices.

The Republican Party has been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act since the day it was passed into law. The American people bought into the message that the ACA was just another failed example of government overreach. Yet the individual components of the policy remain widely popular. The goal of the ACA was to reduce the cost of health care and make affordable health insurance available to all Americans. During the first year of the ACA, health care costs decreased by 4%. That marks the first time in 30 years that we have seen health care costs go down. 7 million previously uninsured Americans now have affordable health insurance. There are 30% fewer uninsured Americans today because of this law.

This is good…very, very good. Yet the American people voted to remove the party responsible for these positive results; handing power over to the party that has promised to repeal the law the day they are sworn in.

Republicans have been in a huff over the president’s executive actions on immigration reform. Before the mid-terms they warned the country: “If this imperialist president has his way on immigration millions of illegal immigrants carrying the Ebola virus will swarm our borders. ISIS militants will pour over our borders by the thousands.” Tom Coburn evened warned that “we’ll see anarchy in the streets if the president acts alone.”

The president made good on his promise and issued his executive orders. Contrary to the hype the country did not go up in flames. In fact polls taken after the president made his announcement showed that 50% of those polled agreed with the president’s actions on immigration. 22% said he didn’t go far enough. That’s a 72% approval of the president’s executive action.

This is good…very, very good. Yet in spite of their approval of the president’s actions the American people voted to terminate the party that finally did SOMETHING on immigration reform and turned the reins over to the party that has turned its back on the largest growing demographic in our country.

In my opinion these are all positive actions taken by Democrats and the Obama administration that have improved the lives of millions of Americans. Not to mention the whole saving the auto industry, saving the banking industry, saving the economy, pulling the country out of a deep recession, getting bin laden, etc. etc. Yet the American people voted to remove Democrats from power and hand the reins to the party that has turned obstruction into an art form.

Democrats and the Obama administration had a strong record to run on in the mid-terms. They weren’t smart enough to get out that positive message.

The American people weren’t smart enough to figure it out for themselves.