Member of the reality-based community of progressive (not anonymous) Massachusetts blogs
I’ve been saying for months that a large portion of the bad poll numbers for Patrick, and the wrong track/right track numbers were largely due to malaise over anyone who’s in office while we’re in a bad downturn. It’s no secret that Gov Patrick’s poll numbers were anemic despite what I think is a pretty darn good stewardship of the state economy, as well as his foresight in pushing the economies of the future back when there was no deficit, and setting up the state for the influxes of stimulus monies from the feds last year, something which in retrospect looks like good planning and sense but which requires a leader who looks at the long term picture, a rarity in politics.
Now that our economy is poised to post a comeback (already started and ahead of the curve), Patrick has seen a rebound of his percent of likely voters by ten points and brings him to 45%. It’s just one poll, and six months is a long time, but at least we’re headed in the right direction.
Which is exactly what I expected. If the economy weathers the insanity in Europe, and turns around by November, incumbents, and national Dems, will do all right. If not, they will be punished. Given how far we sank, it disappoints me that we won’t give Obama and the federal Dems more time to fix it instead of going back to the people who broke it in the first place, but that is political reality.
I really don’t think it has to do with the creation of new jobs which has been non-exsistent. Let’s be honest, this has more to do with the negative ads being run against Tim Cahill and the Governor being the main beneficiary. Plenty of MA residents are still out of work with no prospects.
I think the reduction (albeit slower than we want) of the unemployment percentage says otherwise, Mary. There are jobs being created. I know there are still people unemployed - we still have a number higher than 5%. Doesn’t mean net jobs aren’t being created each month.
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May 14th, 2010 at 11:12 am
When good news is bad! Well, if you’re a GOPer.
From TPM:
Perhaps the most fascinating political conundrum of the 2010 election is one faced by GOP senators, almost all of whom voted for TARP and supported some of the other bailouts in the thick of the financial crisis. The good news is that, for all their shortcomings, the bailouts did the trick, preventing a deeper economic crisis. The bad news is those bailouts are now considered political poison by the tea partying conservative base.
That puts Republicans in a strange position: unable to say the legislation failed, but at pains to distance themselves from their vote nonetheless. Over the past couple days, I’ve asked a number of GOP senators whether, nearly two years later, they think the bailout bill was effective. Their answers were revealing.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who’s retiring at the end of the year and is therefore unencumbered by the need to defend himself from the GOP base, has nothing to run away from.
“It was extremely effective,” Gregg told me. “Not only was it effective and stabilized the financial industry, it also returned to the taxpayers almost $20 billion in interest and dividends that they would have otherwise not have.”