Republicans Are Trying to Prevent or Slow the Economic Recovery from COVID
Here’s a Twitter thread about what Republicans are doing now to try to wreck the economy during Biden’s presidency — trying to hamper the Federal Reserve from being able to do emergency lending when it’s needed.
Here’s an article that is cited at the end of the thread. Here’s a quote from it: “The Toomey provision would be an unprecedented change to the law to strip the Fed chair of one of their most important tools to quickly respond to any future economic crisis.”
Here’s another article about the situation, that is more frank about who’s causing the problem.
Republicans are trying to hamper Biden’s effectiveness in helping the economy to recover. Continuation of our economic problems, with the recovery slowed to a crawl, could benefit Republicans by helping them get the House back and keep the Senate.
When the economy keeps going downhill, Republicans could create talking points blaming Democrats for the problems Republicans caused — points about what a terrible job Democrats are supposedly doing with the economy. Then they could blast those talking points all over Right Wing media — and mainstream media too. Since mainstream media “cover both sides”, that would be easy. Blaming Dems for economic problems has also been done by the GOP for decades. So this approach would have the advantage of repetition and of consistency of who is scapegoated and demonized.
The Republican party has become the con artist party. Republicans are constantly willing to betray the nation in order to get more power and money for themselves. Republicans have shown this pattern for years now —pretending to be extremely concerned about spending, lending and the deficit and trying to restrict all of those functions — but only when Democrats are in power When Republicans control the White House, those concerns totally disappear, as Republicans become total wild spendthrifts.
Democrats have to expect this behavior from GOP con artists. Also, it’s time for Democrats — or other organizations doing messaging on behalf of Democrats — to let the public know that Republicans are betraying our country — doing everything they can to cause the nation to fail when Democrats are in power, so Republicans can give themselves electoral advantages.
I’ve written a lot about Democrats’ incompetence at messaging and the need for other organizations to take over that function for Democrats. Democrats’ losses of a lot of down ballot races in November were likely related to that messaging incompetence.
If the public knew how much, and in how many ways, Republicans have hurt our nation, Democrats would always win most races in landslides. Unfortunately, Fox, Breitbart, Right Wing radio, Right Wing social media etc. never mention such facts about Republican behaviors. At this point, tens of millions of voters are immersed in the Right Wing media bubble. We need new media and social media systems, spreading the truth, directed at the same target audience that consumes Right Wing media now.
Many Americans, perhaps most, are in denial about the damage Right Wing disinformation is doing to our nation. We need to help pull each other out of denial.
The Devil’s Biggest Political Trick: Convincing Us Evil Doesn’t Exist
I’ve written about the need to create new liberal institutions, outside of the Democratic party which is sluggish and nonresponsive to many of our crises as a nation.
Dems Must Learn to Help People AND Take Credit for What They Do AND Let People Know They’ve Been Conned by the GOP
Perhaps the institution we need most would be the Organization for Tracking GOP Crimes — as well as other cheating, corruption, all the different forms of voter suppression and voting system insecurity, lies and conspiracy theories.
A reader alerted me to a couple of existing organizations, Citizens for Ethics and American Oversight, that are doing some of this work. There’s still a lot more that needs to be done. There are so many different forms of cheating by the Right Wing & the GOP, including those listed at the end of the previous paragraph.
Some of this corruption is not even done by government officials and so would be outside the purview of the above two organizations. Many corrupt behaviors are done by Right Wing media, by other companies with a Right Wing agenda or by other Right Wing organizations that are not part of government.
Media Matters and Right Wing Watch do a good job of tracking traditional Right Wing media lies. They don’t fight the lies to any significant or effective degree though. They pretty much preach and debunk to the choir — never reaching the people who are the target audience for the lies. So we do need additional organizations that will do that. There are so many jobs that aren’t being done yet, that need to be done to save democracy.
Media Matters and Sleeping Giants both do pressure campaigns against advertisers. This hasn’t had any large effect on stopping Right Wing media lies yet, but it’s worth a try.
New organizations need to be started to find and carry out effective fighting against Right Wing media lies and spreading the truth.
There are dozens of supposed disinformation experts whose only solution is the one that has failed for decades now — just exhorting people to check sources and do critical thinking. Far more effective solutions than that need to be found and done. My essay above, The Vast Reach of Right Wing Disinformation, points out other possible solutions to that problem.
Also, liberals should track GOP behaviors that are being done to try to drain every drop of power from Democratic officials at the federal, state or local level. A lot of this is not currently being tracked by any organization of which I am aware. The current move to end the Federal Reserve’s emergency powers — so the Fed would be powerless to respond to emergencies during Biden’s presidency — is only one such move. The GOP constantly does this. They cheat to get power for themselves. They drain Dems’ power when Dems have been elected. Then they blame Democrats for “doing nothing” about problems. Wash, rinse, repeat. The need to track this is crucial for saving democracy.
These behaviors need to be tracked both at the overall national level and also in every single state. This is how the GOP has been winning elections. If we drop the ball on tracking and responding to the cheating in even a few states, that could be the key to Republicans taking back the House in 2022 and to Trump or another Republican taking back the presidency in 2024. We need some engineers, accountants, or other types of detail-oriented organized people to do this tracking work. It needs to be a thorough job.
I’m hoping we can all look forward to new institutions such as this being created — organizations that can pick up the work that remains undone — work that is crucial for saving our democracy.
