Repubs are pushing Obama 'record deficit' hard, and I don't see Dems pushing back harder..

[BurtWorm]

Think the average idiot in Teaper land has any idea why Obama's deficit went sky high in his first year? I don't. I know for a fact that all those roobs can focus on is what the Republicans and Fox tell them: that it is the largest single year deficit on record.

Do you know why these deficits are so high? You should. If you don't, it's because the Dems suck at messaging, and if they don't improve their game quickly, they're going to get killed in the midterms, and so will the recovery.

[kentuck]

1. Burtworm.

I agree with you.

We should start our own consulting business. :-)

[bluestateguy]

2. Oh goody, another worry wart thread

Only nerds at think tanks and newspaper editorial boards care about so called "deficits".

Voters sure don't. They didn't care in 1984 when they gave Reagan 49 states or in 2004 when they voted for Bush. One thing Dick Cheney was right about was when he said that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter".

[BurtWorm]

3. It's a herd-mobilizing talking point on the right.

If you tell people over and over that Obama is killing us with deficits--that his are worse than Bushes by (whatever the percentage) and never hear a rebuttal, then look it up and see that in fact, Obama's first deficits actually are bigger than Bush's--and there's no explanation except in think tanks and newspaper editorial boards about why--you've got more and more mobilized right wingers, which is not good at election time. It's never, ever good at election time.

You know what I'm getting at, right? You know the reason for the size of the Obama deficit. Right? If you don't, you prove my point.

[kentuck]

4. Some folks have very short memories...

We were sinking to 6500 in the stock market and there was severe deflation. There were major worries that people would stop spending altogether. We were headed quickly toward a depression.

In order to counter this severe downturn, they did the only thing they knew would work - a heavy dose of Keynesian economics. That was the purpose of the huge "Stimulus Bill". There is little doubt that the stimulus and the bailout of General Motors did much to keep us from going off the cliff that the Republicans had led us to.

That is why the deficit is large now. However, we cannot forget that George W Bush doubled the debt in eight short years. Never in our history had we had such a huge turnaround from surplus to debt. Bill Clinton had left Bush and the Republicans a surplus of $260 billion dollars and a projected surplus of $5 trillion dollars. Bush turned that into a $5 trillion dollar debt and left a deficit of about $1.3 trillion dollars to President Obama, along with the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Does that about sum it up?

[BurtWorm]

5. Yes.

Shouldn't every DUer know it? Shouldn't every Democrat out in the world arguing against idiots on the right know it?

If Democrats were doing their job perfectly, Americans would be hearing over and over and over about the Stimulus deficits yielding to Recovery budgets. Obama tries to make that point when he says unlike the previous administration, his deficits are designed to be paid for. The Bushists just spent like idiots. The Obama deficits are designed to be temporary. This should be common knowledge on DU, at least.

Just spend a little moment trying to explain this to someone who is having the socialist nature of these deficits drilled into their brains by Fox. I did that today, arguing with some dopes on yahoo.com (no pun intended) over the McClatchy Bush is Back non-story. All of those jerks have it wrong. But barely anyone fighting back had it right either.

It's not that difficult a concept. Why is it so hard a sell?