Would A Third Party Challenger Make A Difference In The 2012 Election? New York Op-Ed columnist Thomas L Friedman sure thinks so. If the country was further along in its embrace of judging one for one’s deeds and not who one is, then I would agree.
I have always thought the President was elected before his time. The decimation of our economy by the last 30 years of supply side economics caused many Americans irrespective of their internal prejudices to decide to try something they had never tried before. Obama was completely different. The problem is when change did not occur fast enough or in some cases at all, those that would not have voted for an Obama under normal circumstances, became his most ardent critics. I see it and hear it virtually every day.
A third party candidate would give those voters a place to go. They would rationalize to themselves that they did not vote for the other guy who would reinstitute the policies that caused the decimation of the middle class. I think that is what Mr. Friedman fails to realize. A third party candidate in this specific election would give the Right Wing a complete victory because it would play into the inner most tribal carnality of many.
I agree with Mr. Friedman that the President must come out with a bold plan. I think it is much too early to do so. In today’s 24 hour media and because of the moneyed interest that owns them, a false narrative would be prepared and allowed to metastasize in the minds of many. Is it not ironic that the Ryan Plan, a plan that transfers middle class wealth to a select few, one that provably hurt the elderly, the poor, and the middle class in general is not examined by the mainstream media?
We do not need a third party candidate at this time. We need an informed citizenry willing to demand that their representatives represent their best interests. What do you think?
Wasting Warren Buffett
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Watching this campaign unfold reaffirms how much it would have benefitted from a serious, centrist third-party challenger. It would have been so clarifying to have an independent voice calling out Mitt Romney for running a campaign that consists of decrying the last three and a half years of the Obama presidency, while offering to reinstate the very same failed policies that made the eight years of George W. Bush a disaster that President Obama has spent most of his time cleaning up. And it would have been equally clarifying to have an independent challenger calling out Obama for failing to put a credible, specific economic plan on the table — at the scale of our problem — but relying instead on a campaign that amounts to a series of discrete appeals to each of the Democratic Party constituencies. It feels like a ground war with no air cover.
But there will be no third-party candidate, so the only hope is getting Obama to raise his game. To do that, the president needs to recognize just how badly he wasted Warren Buffett — using him for a two-week, wedge-issue sugar high.
Obama got Buffett to endorse the “Buffett Rule” — a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for any individual who makes more than $1 million a year so that all millionaires have to pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries. The plan had no chance of passing, would have made only a small dent in the deficit and was rightly decried by experts as a gimmick that only diverted attention from what we really need: comprehensive tax reform that can substantially raise revenue in a fairer manner. The Buffett Rule has largely faded away.
What a waste of Warren Buffett’s credibility.
Buffett is a businessman out to make a profit. But he is respected by many as a straight-talking nonpartisan — someone who can “call the game.” What the president should have done is follow the advice of the Princeton University economist and former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder, namely lay out a specific “three-step rehab program for our nation’s fiscal policy.” Call it the Obama Plan; it should combine a near-term stimulus on job-creating infrastructure, a phase-in, as the economy improves, of “something that resembles the 10-year Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan — which would pay for the stimulus 15-20 times over” and a specific plan to “bend the health care cost-curve downward.” Obama has already offered the first; he still has not risen to the second and the third would be an easy extension of his own health care plan.
Obama needs a second look from independents who could determine this election. To attract that second look will require a credible, detailed recovery plan that gets voters to react in three ways: 1) “Now that sounds like it will address the problem, and both parties are going to feel the pain.” 2) “That plan seems fair: the rich pay more, but everyone pays something.” 3) “Wow, Obama did something hard and risky. He got out ahead of Congress and Romney. That’s leadership. I’m giving him a second look.”
I’d bet anything that if the president staked out such an Obama Plan, Buffett and a lot of other business leaders would endorse it. It would give the G.O.P. a real problem. After all, what would help Obama more right now: Repeating over and over the Buffett Rule gimmick or campaigning from now to Election Day by starting every stump speech saying: “Folks, I have an economic plan for America’s future that Warren Buffett and other serious business leaders endorse — and Mitt Romney doesn’t.” [MORE]
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Mr. Friedman says that the President must come out with a bold plan. Really? Where has he been and what has he been doing for the last 3 1/2 years? If you look at what he was doing before he was mistakenly elected president you only need to look at what he did which was nothing special. Count his present or absents.