Despite Paul's jokey headline below, used to make a good point, a new poll shows that voters don't miss Bush on economic matters. Nearly half of Americans think Obama's policies are better for the economy than Bush's were. For progressives, that's a blindingly obvious conclusion reached by an alarmingly small number of people. As Congress Daily points out, though, this is pretty high given how abysmal the economy is.
So why, then, do Republican talking points seem to influence the election debate so strongly? Partly, it's that Americans hate the stimulus: The article notes that previous polls have found that more than half of respondents don't think it helped with unemployment. The question that follows is what Americans consider to be an Obama economic policy if not the stimulus, and the answer seems to be tax cuts: Most Americans support repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone or for the highest earners.
This just adds to the ever present frustration that voters don't understand anything about economic policy. While it's reassuring to see that many voters understand the importance of taxes, they apparently don't want to see the government spending it, since a completely modest recovery plan was so successfully labeled as wasteful. At the same time, this shows an opportunity for Democrats to stop shying away from the idea that taxes, especially on the highest earners, are popular.
-- Monica Potts
