You may think so, Jon, but this is a case of preaching to the choir with standard boilerplate.

Perhaps more relevant to most attentive voters would be some insight into how Obama plans to break with the standard Democrat line on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which McCain has a long and substantive track record of campaigning for reforming against opposition from both the Bush people and the Democrats in Congress, including Obama.

I'll just say I appreciate Joe's shoutout to Lansing where I'm sitting in my office working right now. And no, I wouldn't agree either, that the fundamentals of our economy are strong right now.

This is perfect, spot on.  Go Joe go, this is the real message of this campaign.

I only wish he'd cool it on praising McCain, he does not deserve it and I frankly don't care about Joe's personal friendship with him.  McCain is disgraceful.

Succintly putting the economic suggestions of the Obama campaign into sound bites is extrememly difficult. But it is essential, today, since the soundbite from MC is taht the economy is fundamentally strong, What a great line to pivot off of.

Details about Fannie and Freddie, bank supports, etc won't interest average voters, but this speech begins to make the point that we have a big shit storm headed our way, and Obama has our back, while MC has ... rich people's backs...

I don't actually have a problem with acknowledging and crediting people for what they have done right and have done well; if nothing else, it clears a path when it is time to start taking stabs at the person. Being able and willing to grant a person the credit they are rightly do makes the negatives that much more potent. This can be problematic when the person is a complete screw-up; but establishing a prior pattern of acknowledging positives helps when there is nothing positive to say about one's opponent, as well.

I'm wondering when will McCain drop the line about "the fundamentals of our economy are strong". At best, this sounds like a euphemism for "our economy is shrinking, but that just means we are creating room for growth". At worst, it sounds like a euphemism for "The rich are continuing to get richer, I don't see what the big deal is." When the economy is losing more jobs than are being created, the fundamentals are not strong. When the banks are failing, and the government has to bail-out institutions like Fannie and Freddie, the economy is not strong.

And McCain is going to have to do a lot better than the standard platitudes of "reform Wall St." and "increse regulations" if he wants to gain fiscal policy credibility. Saying things like "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" on the day when Lehman goes belly-up does not help.

Perhaps McCain can let us know exactly which fundamentals he thinks are sound.  It will tell us everything you need to know about his values.

To robertpowell:

Sure it's to the choir.  But does that mean the choir is imagining their difficulties?  Take a look at Frum's effort to come (partially) clean about rising economic inequality and its political fallout (Sunday NYT Magazine of Sept 7).

But I'll grant you:  from what I know about Fannie and Freddie, this is an unholy mess in which the Dems are complicit in their own way.  What was the name of that quondam Obama advisor from, I think, Minnesota, who had to leave the campaign because he was damaged goods from earlier Fannie Mae troubles?

Actually, McCain is doing the same thing that another economically functionally illiterate politician (that would be George W. Bush) was doing earlier this year, as Bear Stearns unraveled and housing prices fell through the floor -- trying to calm the markets but repeating pablum statements that everything is OK, we're just going through a phase, etc., etc.  This didn't work then, and it doesn't work now, because investors are not stupid, and markets are not calmed by simply repeating a soothing mantra.  The only way to calm down a turbulent market is to provide clear policies on how to stop and contain the current bleeding and how to find a way out of the mess, both in the near-short-term and the longer-term.  That's what Bernanke and Paulsen did in the spring, and what will need to be done now.  McCain's comments just show how clueless he is about economics and how markets work and react.  Obama needs to grasp this moment, propose concrete short- and long-term steps IMMEDIATELY, and not let this go until the election.

Oh, and another thing -- anything that keeps Sarah Palin's name out of the headlines (for any reasons short of her sacrificing a goat to Baal live on prime-time television) is good for the Dems.

Wandy: Yes!  It is time he gave voice to his fundamental values. High time.  But I know better now than to hold my breath waiting for such things.  The brain can only suffer so much oxygen deprivation without detrimental consequences.  (On the other hand, a bit of brain damage might help me understand the McCain campaign.)

We shouldn't need McCain to tell us "exactly which fundamentals ...are sound." Attempting to spin the current slow-down as the next Great Depression may please the class strugglers, but to most voters it just looks like the same old gloom-and-doom lefty bullshit.

No amount of sweaty propaganda is going to convince rank-and-file Americans that our economy is in ruins for the obvious reason that it's not. We've virtually shrugged off $150/bbl oil and the mortgage cirsis running simultaneous with a two-front war--the economy grew at a rate of 3.3% last quarter, a number most European states would kill for. Americans own more of their own homes, have more junk like extra cars, boats, beach houses, snowmobiles, wide-screen tv's, etc. than most of the rest of the world put together. More of us go to college, take vacations and early retirements--over 50% of the country owns stock, homelessness is at historic lows, and obesity is a much bigger problem than hunger for Chrissakes.

There are certainly problems, as there nearly always are. But plunging oil prices and a sensible resolution of the housing mess and the war in Iraq will most likely result in another boom. In other words, the fundamentals are sound.

It is unseemly for people who are so rich to moan and groan so much

Made my previous post before I'd read Judis' jaundiced recollection of Clintonism's endorsement of banking and financial deregulation, above all the repeal of the Glass-Steagall legislation.  Guess our hands aren't clean either. But I'm still resisting moral equivalence.

Robert Powell said:

"There are certainly problems, as there nearly always are. But plunging oil prices and a sensible resolution of the housing mess and the war in Iraq will most likely result in another boom."

Then again, they may not.

Yes, Bob, I deliberately omitted "In other words, the fundamentals are sound" that concluded the paragraph, because the phrase has become a cliche. Sound to whom? Where will the next boom come from? And how many middle class families will benefit from it? Or, should we be asking where the next boom of "irrational exuberance" will be and how will it be sold to small investors, at what cost when the bubble bursts? Finally, will less regulation, or no regulation, increase the odds things won't go sour again? More people than I have ever known are more distrustful of "sound fundamentals" than ever in their lifetimes (myself inclcuded).

Would a global recession lasting through, say, next year or "early 2010" - I've read this just this morning - be a good thing, too?

Finally, is this "phony crisis" that Americans are "whining" about, going to blamed on Obama and the Democrats? (I'm sure the McCain campaign will be saying as much in a matter of days, if not hours.

I'll tell you RP - you live in a different world than the middle class of this country.  "Most" of "us" go to college and take vacations?  I love it!  More "Let em eat cake" mentality from the comfortable.  

This is a value thing, cleary.  I know that the strong middle class of this country is - much more than our military might - the one thing that really separates us from the rest of the world.  This is what makes us strong, and continuing to take it for granted and crapping all over it will make us weak, period.  

We have the lowest savings rate in the Western world, millions of formerly safe middle class workers live paycheck to paycheck, 50 million people have no health insurance, public schools are a 50/50 chance you're taking with your kid at best, food prices are out of control,  the infrustructure of this country is becoming just plain dangerous.  What is the plan to compete with China and India for jobs?  I'm no protectionist, but falling back on ideology just isn't going to cut it.  We need concrete answers to all of these things.

Call it lefty gloom and doom - that's a nice reductionist content free Repubican talking point - but it has nothing to do with the reality of the middle class of this country. No one is looking for a handout, get with the program, this is 2009, not 1984.  You need to think in terms of now.  

You'd better check your basic public health knowledge RP.  Obesity is a well known sign of poverty - not wealth.  It speaks to the quality of the food available, cheap corn syrup products are very cheap and this is the main reason we are so fat, not that the middle class is dining on fine foods every night, give me a break.  

Only if they win, tomeg, which is looking a hell of a lot less likely these days.

We need real reform, not just in terms of sensible regulation of financial markets, but in health care, education, energy policy, taxes--plenty. The election will turn on whom voters believe is most likely to deliver at least some of the needed change, and this is a significantly more nuanced question than many partisan zealots are able to acknowledge. It may well be that the guy with the more substantial record of going against the entrenched ideologues in his own party will be seen as that guy, and it's not entirely clear to me who that is.

One thing's for sure--most American voters are obscenely rich by any objective measure, and efforts by Democrats to convince them that they are the Tom Joads of the 21st Century are unlikely to be any more convincing now than they were for Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis.

Great post, RP!  It really explains why national polls are continually returning numbers that say that 70% of the population thinks the country is on the wrong track.

I wondered how the 1/3 of mortgage holders who owe more than the house is worth could be so self-absorbed and greedy.  For goodness sakes, they should just go out and get another wide screen TV and shut up.

RP:

Obscenely rich compared to poorer nations, perhaps, and in the consumer goodies we've acquired thanks to cheap oil, cheap foreign labor, the buying power of retail giants, and easy access to consumer credit.

But I think you underestimate the burdens of personal debt, the collective lack of savings, the equity lost by the real estate bust, the increase in productivity that has come from people working longer hours as their real income remains stagnant during a time of economic growth, the rising costs of health insurance that fewer and fewer employers are paying for in full, the declines in many sectors of long-term job security.

I hope that your argument is the one the GOP tries to make.

Yep, they are just a nation of whiners -- if you want to see a really destitute place, just look at Zimbabwe or Gaza, or remember how much lower living standards were before World War II!  And since we aren't as badly off as that, then everything is just fine and will work itself out.  I have a Forbes Magazine article from 1992 making just that argument seared into my memory banks -- puzzling why Americans were so unhappy, given that they had indoor plumbing, electricity and a steady diet, unlike their ancestors in the 1930's!  That argument worked well for GHW Bush that year, didn't it?

It's 48 days until the election. Do you know where your vice presidential candidate is? If you're

Politics inspires more armchair quaterbacking than football. And although I know a thing or two about