Apropos of David’s post below … Tough, true new video from the DNC:
Prominently featured is MItt Romney’s 2008 Op-Ed in the New York Times, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Hmmm :
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
Well, GM did go bankrupt. Detroit got a turnaround — heavily influenced, leaned-upon, and browbeaten by this adminstration — and a check. They needed both. The question was whether the politicians were willing to walk away from millions of people who work in the auto industry, or whether they wanted to make it work. It was a choice, with consequences either way. The President made one choice; the GOP made the other.
So let’s be clear: This is electoral death for MItt, Pawlenty, and much of the GOP. I just cannot imagine how this doesn’t rain on the their heads like a ton of bricks. I mean, they literally took a bet against American jobs … and lost. (They continue to do so in Congress.)
How much appetite is there among the American public for pure Social Darwinism? Did Americans want a Rust Bowl?
What were MItt et al thinking?
jconway says
Michigan is one of the states I am worried about, it and Wisconsin went from solid blue to lean red in 2010 and will be far more competitive in 2012 than it was in 2008. Many tea party supporters were against the bailout, in spite of the fact that it cost American jobs, their response “those autoworkers can move South and work for Honda in right to work states”, the Reaganomics Kool Aid and its affect on working white people will take a few elections to undo. That said, play this in MI, replay this again and again in MI, in northern IN, OH, KY, and other states with auto industry jobs. If Obama holds WI, MI, OH, and IN he is in pretty good shape. Also Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and even media golden boy Mitch Daniels have done a lot to descredit the GOP brand in these states. Many unions that sat on the fence, and some like the OH Firefighters that endorsed McCain, are energized, fired up, and ready to win votes for Obama. Abortion and gay marriage don’t matter when you don’t have a job, and as for national security who can beat the President that whacked Osama? It will be on the pocketbook issues, and Republicans, especially these Republicans, are going to lose big.
fake-consultant says
…is whether progressive candidates can emerge in districts that are now “lean r” that can challenge conservatives, especially in downticket state races – because without a credible “50 state strategy” for both presidential and state campaigns, there won’t be a lot of progressive gain from a potentially giant opportunity.
cmassd says
I think that this episode was the administration’s worst moment thus far. The entire economy depended on the financial sector, which therefore required government intervention. The auto industry is no longer the lynchpin of the economy, and didn’t justify any intervention at all.
What we got is a a $22 billion gift to the UAW by Democrats trying to score points in a swing state. Now GM still makes shitty cars, but subsidized by the government, and at a fake competitive advantage over Ford, which was thus penalized for restructuring (over UAW resistance) in a timely rather than grossly incompetent manner. (Good luck to the next heavily unionized firm that requires restructuring in order to survive; and good luck dealing with the UAW, which no longer has as big an interest in a successful Ford, since it now owns a big piece of GM.)
If Democrats can’t even hold onto Michigan after this $22 billion fiasco, then they truly are done for in 2012.
David says
The number of jobs saved by the intervention was enormous at a time when the country really could not afford more job losses. The total cost to taxpayers will be zero – we’ll probably even profit, since the loans were not interest-free. Plus, they basically adopted the plan I suggested before pretty much anyone else, so clearly it was the right and just thing to do. 😉
I just don’t see much downside.
cmassd says
Of all of the bad ways to engage in this ill-advised undertaking, this plan was the least bad. (On the other hand, that is like having the best invasion plan for Iraq, circa 2002, IMO. OK, maybe not as bad as that.)
I don’t see anything other than pretend profits on this. Even the “payback” by Chrysler is BS re-told by political, not financial reporters.
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PS, my old account was associated with a now defunct email address, and so I couldn’t recover the password in the new system. Is that account lost forever, or can it be retrieved in some other way?
David says
Should take care of it.
centralmassdad says
Nice to be me again.
Charley on the MTA says
The record is mixed on whether GM makes sh#$%y cars. Consumer Reports says they’ve gotten a lot better; JD Power says they’re still below average; Motor Trend called the Volt its Car of the Year. Chrysler is still pretty lousy. Don’t know what can be done about that.
Still, I’d say it’s better to have a US auto industry than not.
centralmassdad says
into a small rear-wheel drive platform they call the “Alpha Platform.” It is supposed to be the basic starting point for all of their “performance” (i.e., Camaro) and “luxury” cars (Caddy), and they made noises about aiming for something comparable to the BMW 3 series (which, by the way, would be really cool for any American car company to achieve).
A few months ago, they reported that they will make the platform “flexible” to accommodate all of their different engines, from the little dinky four cylinders to their manly man V8s. That means that they will ALL be too heavy, in order to accommodate those V8s, which means that this new line of high-price, high margin vehicles will look pretty and drive poorly, and, like other GM cars, will probably only be purchased by people who like driving a sofa.
Good for them that they are moving past the falls-apart-if-you-drive-it phase, I guess.
JimC says
I like it when we defend our accomplishments.
nopolitician says
The crux of what Romney was talking about is that he thinks that American workers are overpaid. He may be focusing on autoworkers, but he really believes that just about all American workers are overpaid.
I think this is theme that we need to get out when talking to someone about the difference between Republicans and Democrats — that Republicans think we’re overpaid and Democrats think that we’re underpaid. I think that is an issue to press Republicans on, particularly the more pure ideologues.
We need to make this about people’s pocketbooks. When you talk to Scott Brown with a truck driver by your side, ask him how to get the truck driver to be paid more money. He’ll likely stammer out something like “the market should set the wages” — so make it clear that he believes that $17.50/hour is too much to pay someone to “just drive a truck” – because most Republicans really believe this, while at the same time professing that $150,000 a year is “not rich”.
Bob Neer says
He believes that the march of international capitalism is inevitable and irresistible, and the US economy should refashion itself sooner rather than later for its own good under the existing rules of the system. What this ultimately passive way of thinking neglects is (a) the possibility that he is wrong, (b) the inevitable harsh immediate consequences for the voters involved, (c) the destruction of a national asset, and (d) an effort to reformulate the existing economic paradigm so that the US automobile industry can succeed, rather than simply accepting that all of its jobs should go to China or some other place deemed superior in the judgment of 25 year old analysts at Bain.
michael says
I was at a rally for Obama in Jacksonville, FL the day before he was elected. We waited several hours for Obama to show up, but I was fortunate to be sitting next to a recently retired African-American autoworker from Detroit named Darrin. He had driven non-stop overnight from Detroit just to be at this rally. One of the many wise things he said – and it was a very, very interesting conversation – was that he felt that America simply hadn’t learned how to take care of its own people. He hoped that Obama’s election would be a step in the right direction. I’ve been thinking of Darrin lately and I agree with David: it was the right and just thing to do.
jconway says
They are not making shittier cars, at least over at GM. Buick is the fastest growing car brand seeing sales increase by 24%, Cadillac was always strong, and Chevy is doing decently. Motor Trend,JD Power, and other car evaluators are giving the Volt high praise, and claiming that most GM models are now as reliable if not more so than their Japanese counterparts and fuel efficiency is increasing. To Central Mass Dad you might live in Central Mass, but in the center of this great country there are literally thousands of jobs and people dependent on GM. My girlfriend bought her used car from her fathers parishoner and he is a devout Methodist that usually votes GOP, but the GM bailout made him an Obama supporter. Its not just blue collar jobs in Detroit, its small businesses across America, its those working at the car finance companies.
Also have you ever been to Detroit? That really would’ve sent it over the abyss and would have been an economic Katrina to that entire region. Hundreds of thousands of jobs if you consider the interconnectivity of the GM and Chrysler networks were saved at a time when they were desperately needed. Also forcing the UAW to be a stakeholder was the only way to make them give up the pensions they were promised, and is a sure way of keeping them happy and from striking, and returning the auto industry to the coop model of Fordism it started with, where workers had a stake in their company. Im a free trader and I tend to disagree with protectionism, but its never good for any global power to willfully surrender its industrial capacity, and this move saved it from oblivion. Ford btw, was able to move up a few spots and benefited from not being ‘government motors’ so I would say it was at an advantage, not a disadvantage, by refusing bailout and its the healthiest of the Big Three and might even be healthier than Honda and Toyota.
centralmassdad says
that the entire enterprise was a gift to a big special interest group in a swing state or two.
Christopher says
…hardly constitutes a special interest. This bailout was much more justifiable than Wall Street bailouts, IMO, because there are real jobs and products in the auto industry, whereas financial services is just about moving around obscene amounts on unearned income.
jconway says
At the end of the day, in spite of the polls, it was great politics as well. Hard for any of the GOPers to run on jobs when they would’ve voted to let millions of them be lost.