Are Americans Stupid?

Mitt Romney has proven himself to be what anyone with a pair of lazy eyes and one good ear could discern with ease. He is a master pragmatist like none other I have seen in my lifetime nor studied in history, and politicians generally are hopeless pragmatists.  He is a product of late 20th Century American business which chooses short term goals in the pursuit of increased shareholder equity over long term structural integrity, and by any means possible.  His almost dizzying display of changing positions, which has been correctly observed by commentators, pundits, opponents, and supporters, is only eclipsed by how little a difference this tact of Romney's has impacted American opinion. Combining with such things as his matter-of-fact refusal to release prior tax returns has made him the most opaque Presidential candidate in many decades. Yet it seems to make little difference, especially to white male voters. Is this the result of his campaign's cleverness, the incompetency of the Democratic opposition, or the revelation of a troubling ignorance on the part of the American people?

Without a doubt, the Democrats and the Obama Campaign have failed to address and convince the American electorate on the negative aspects of a leader of the Free World taking a unique position that compliments every group he speaks in front of. Romney has said the most outrageous things, sometimes repeatedly to fit the sales pitch he's giving at the moment and yet seems rarely to be challenged by the opposition. Therefore, the media takes little notice as well. Take numbers, which are simple to expose.

In all three debates Romney said definitively that 23 million Americans are unemployed (a statement made several times at the Republican convention as well) and that Obama's failure to bring the unemployment rate down to 5.4% (as Mitt said Obama promised) equals 9 million unemployed. Take the second point. If the difference between our current unemployment rate of 7.8% and 5.4% (or 2.4%) equals 9 million people than you must accept two conclusions: first that the population of the US is approximately 375 million (about 68 million more than reality) and that everyone other than the 9 million unemployed has a job, everyone - every child of all ages, every senior, every mother, every disabled person, every everyone has a job, including the 5.4%. The number of working Americans is a moving target, but if you take the estimated number of 155 million working Americans provided by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) it lowers Romney's proclamation down from 9 million to 3.7 million. That doesn't even take into consideration that 5.4% is deemed full employment for the nation. Has Romney been challenged on his ludicrous number by anyone? Not that I'm aware of.

The popular Republican number of 23 million unemployed has a few more subtleties. Although it was stated clearly as "unemployed" at the Republican convention and later by Romney, it has more recently been described as 23 million "looking for work". That's because the number was concocted by far right wing "fact-ories", using bias statistics to represent not just those unemployed, but also those who have stopped looking for work (which includes retirees - the largest subgroup in that category), those new workers who haven’t started looking for work but presumably would have had more jobs been available, those deemed "under-employed", and also those who feel their jobs unsatisfactory (a factor that arguably could included half of all working Americans). The BLS sets the current unemployment numbers at less than 12 million of which more than half is, again, unemployment you would expect to find in a deemed fully employed economy. Has Obama or the limited number of his "spokesmen" ever challenged this deception by Romney and the Republicans? What have you heard?

In the first debate Romney whimsically presented, unchallenged, that he has five sons who believed (at some age) that saying the same thing over and over was a path to creating reality. If so, it appears the teacher became the student. His repeated use of ridiculous assertions, not just with off the wall statistics, but with his plans to balance budgets, maintain revenues, or even his decision to withhold the release of his taxes as a means of keeping the opposition honest have been facilitated by the apparent inability of that opposition to take strong issue with any of it. Obama's campaign has attempted to shoot holes occasionally in Mitt's allegations, but the agile Romney has kept the targets moving and added new targets daily. Obama and the Democrats successfully painted an accurate picture of Mitt Romney the business man. What they have been failing to do is to show that the man who will do and say anything necessary to close the deal, slash & burn, and harvest the short term profits in business is the same man who is a couple of percentage points away from becoming the Head of State, Commander-in-chief, and leader of the Free World.

Obama's extraordinary performance in office against both devastating economic conditions and psychotic obstructionism on the part of the new Neo-Conservative Republicans has earned him reelection. It should be earning him an easy reelection. If Mitt Romney is elected, with all the elitist baggage he carts around with him, then this nation has learned nothing from its gross ineptness of reelecting George Bush in 2004. That would be either collective dementia or tragic stupidity.