REPORT FROM AMERICA
Democrats in Denver
Insiders know: It's not the war, stupid
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 | 11:00 AM ET
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
Business is good these days for Elder Nys and Elder Lemafa. The two young men are serving the two years of missionary work Mormons must put in as a rite of passage, spending their days pedalling mountain bikes through the suburbs of Denver.
For Sale signs are a common sight in Denver's Green Valley Ranch neighbourhood, where 10 per cent of the homes are affected by foreclosures. (CBC) Elder Nys has been at it for 19 months. Elder Lemafa's a rookie. (For the period of the missionary work, they are not permitted to use their first names.)
Selling God door-to-door requires thick skin. But Elder Nys is finding people more receptive to his proselytizing lately. "I have definitely have seen more anxiety grow with the economy's decline," he says, straddling his bike on a street in Denver's Green Valley Ranch neighbourhood.
One in 10 of the surrounding homes is in foreclosure, with weeds choking the lawn and sheriff's notices on the doors. A lot of others are heading in the same direction. Elder Nys reckons that's why doors are opening more often and slamming less.
"Sometimes hard times can bring humility to people, and when they're more humble, they're more willing to listen to how God can bless them."
Just 25 kilometres away, in the high-security fortress where the Democrats are holding their four-day coronation ceremony for Barack Obama, party strategists are trying to figure out how to capitalize on the gloom, too.
Because as much as rank-and-file Democrats might like to chatter smugly about George Bush's war and what a foolish mistake it was, the political pros know voters are fixated on the wheezing economy, the collapsing value of their homes and their accumulating mountain of personal debt.
The cupboards are bare
James Carville, the former Bill Clinton adviser who in 1992 famously proclaimed, "It's the economy, stupid," has not changed his advice. Carville isn't on the Barack Obama team, but said last week he would advise the nominee he "must own the economic issue."
Here's how bad it is:
American homeowners' slide into foreclosure continues, wrecking neighbourhoods, families and local economies. Inventories of unsold homes have risen to a record level. At the same time, prices keep slipping.
Credit card debt stands at an all-time high, having doubled since 2000. The average American owes something like $17,000 in debt not secured by real estate, in many cases paying usurious interest rates on the monthly balance.
And most people can no longer borrow against their vanishing home equity, which is how so many spent the better part of a decade financing their shopaholic orgies.
Government finances are no better. George W. Bush was a big spender for his eight years as president. He ran a deficit of $389 billion in fiscal 2008, meaning he borrowed it, mostly abroad. And even as he borrowed and spent, he pushed through two major tax cuts, further beggaring the federal treasury.
Furthermore, with the population aging and the workforce shrinking, big government programs like Social Security and Medicare are colossal unfounded liabilities. Retiring boomers will expect to collect, but as things stand now, the money won't be there.
More immediately, the economy is shedding jobs. And to top it off, the Federal Reserve is expected to start raising interest rates.
It's immensely depressing to anyone with an interest in such statistics, and has worldwide implications. Most Americans, though, ingest just enough of it to acquire a sense of deep foreboding.
Martin Medina, a Denver construction electrician who says his finances are "OK," puts it this way: "I don't know where I'm going to be in the next five years. You think that you're going to get ahead, and everything costs so much, and there's not a lot of work going, and it's just a worry."
So, like millions of others in this nation of rugged individualists, Medina looks to his government: "If the economy is going well, then there is more building, and then I have more work. So whoever I think is going to do that for me, then that's who gets my vote."
The 'tax and spend' quandary
No wonder, then, that as the Democrats gathered in Denver's Pepsi Center this week — and whooped and cheered and shook signs and congratulated one another on not being Republicans — Barack Obama was in Iowa and Kansas, trying to talk economy.
Obama's plan is pretty clear. He intends to spend, and use the power of big government to intervene in the economy.
He would impose restraints on trade, force the private sector to participate in an ambitious health-care plan, punish companies that send jobs offshore, auction carbon "permits" to raise money and lower emissions, and use government clout to force down prescription-drug prices.
To finance all this, he says he would raise taxes considerably on businesses and rich Americans (although his definition of "rich" will no doubt be a matter of severe disagreement).
His problem is convincing a public with an inbred suspicion of "tax and spend" policies. So, he avoids pointing out the obvious —that Americans have to start paying their debts — and presents himself as a tax cutter.
"Ninety-five per cent of Americans would see a tax cut under my plan," he told a clearly dubious audience in Iowa this week. "Middle-class families would get three times the amount of tax relief under Barack Obama than under John McCain," he told airline workers the next day in Kansas.
He mocks McCain, whose wife is an heiress and who couldn't tell a reporter recently how many homes he owns.
He mocks President George W. Bush, who he blames for impoverishing the average family by $2,000 per year.
And he paints himself as a man who, not too long ago, was sitting with his wife at the kitchen table worrying about how to pay the family bills.
"I just don't think [John McCain] gets it," he tells the crowds. "I don't think he understands what ordinary Americans are going through … But I do, and that's why I'm running for president of the United States."
Nothing left to lose?
But Obama's economic pitch isn't as widely embraced as his gauzier messages of hope and unity. McCain, who promises to extend the Bush tax cuts, is tied in the polls with Obama. He emphasizes individual responsibility to pay medical bills. He has little enthusiasm for big economic programs. And his surrogates suggest Obama would implement socialism.
Some voters, meanwhile, appear to have moved beyond worry.
Elders Nys and Lemafa report a strange trend among the working-class households they visit: For some reason, says Elder Nys: "We've seen a lot of people buying brand new cars recently. Cars they can't afford. I think it's just because they feel like they don't have anything else to lose... like, if they can get it now, might as well."
