How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms

I read an interesting article today, and started to compose a reponse to the article I'd read here:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/how-obama-saved-capitalism-and-lost-the-midterms/

There are a couple of other interesting articles I'd read, that had my mind thinking:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-valley%E2%80%99s-dark-secret-it%E2%80%99s-all-about-age/

And a script I've been working on about a guy outsourcing HIMSELF (off-shoring himself to India). That script is now back on the front burner because I had a visceral reaction to some of the characters in "Monsoon Wedding" - particularly the Indian who had a great high tech job in Houston, and was planning to go back there right after the wedding. [not mentioning that there's some Computer Science major in Houston who is out of work because of him - he probably does similar work to what I do, gets paid 1/3 the amount, and loves it - but puts me out of that job because he's willing to work for less $$ - but don't get me started...]

Many of you know I'm an 'economic determinist' - I firmly believe that history can be most clearly viewed through the lens of "Those who have the strongest economy win the day, and will write the history books". Think US Civil War / War Between the States (or as my grandmother said, "The Wa'wuh of Nawth'un Aggre'shin"). In the late 20th Century, the US wrote the history books. In the 2000's to date) the Chinese and Hindi's will write the history books unless we as a nation address our four (4x) toughest problems: 1) Jobs, 2) Jobs, 3) jobs, 4) jobs. Health care? Education? Housing / the home-ownership American Dream? The Economy? All important - but all underly problems 1-4. If you have a tenuous job (or have NO job), or are in an industry like mine where you have to change companies every few years to advance, you worry about where your health care is going to come from both a) long-term, and b) in the 'between positions' / interim time periods. Scariest thing I've seen lately? The California jobs fair room where they asked the 2000 people in the room (looking for work) how many of them had PhD's (a few hands), how many had Masters (several dozen more MBA hands), and bachelor degrees (and all 2000 people had hands-in-the-air).

Back to the original story (top link - above) I read the story, and started to 'reply' but the reply was > 500 characters, or words, or something, and wasn't being accepted. Too long - as usual. So, I saved it in my 'notepad', and pasted it here:

"Sorry to say, but in 2000 I voted for "W". I paid for that mistake by losing a substantial fortune in the ensuing economic debacle(s). It made me stop, take a long hard look at the two political parties, and realize that as an 'economic determinist', the Democrats were better on the economy than Republicans. To me, this was a huge shock - i reasoned "since the GOP is so rich-centric, surely they must do everything they can to help the rich get richer by making the capitalist US economy run more efficiently." But my research proved otherwise.
Nixon/Ford/Bush/W=recession. Kennedy/Johnson/CLINTON=prosperity/boom. Even Carter navigated the country out of high interest rates into prosperity (that Reagan took credit for), and lost the 1980 election because of 21% mortgages, and the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan out-spent the USSR, and bankrupted them, but created huge debt for US. "W" sent us into 2 'off-budget' wars, and bailed out his wall street buddies - and Obama gets the bailout-blame. And the guys on wall street think they're making profits now because they're smart(!) (not because the taxpayers saved their asses, and kept their entire industry from going under!?!) Talk about Wall Street hubris!"

I was thinking about the mid-terms - and trying to explain how the Democrats get economics better than Republicans. Now I have to find my copy of that book - the best thing I've ever read on the subject, the chapter "Talking Points at a Republican Barbeque" in "We're Right, They're Wrong" by James Carville. It was written about the 'Contract On America', but holds true today - moreso after the Bush administration left the country's economy a burned out mess. It's as if they looted and pilaged their way through the country's budget surplusses, Social Security trust fund, etc, ran off to play in Dick Cheney's bomb shelter/basement, and burned everything behind them.

Needless to say - this had to be said by someone... who better than someone. Who better to say it than someone who no one reads - the mid-life bachelor who's beyond his 'date-by' date.