Our Economy's Best Chance

Posted: 06/ 6/11 05:32 PM ET

The terrible wrongness of the Ryan budget plan combined with the strangest, craziest Republican presidential candidate field ever makes it rather obvious how important it is to get President Obama re-elected. To have extreme right Republicans (that seems to be pretty much all of them these days) control every branch of government would do even more damage now, as weakened economically as we are, than the 2003-2006 run they had with Bush and Congressional Republicans running everything -- and think how ugly that was for the country. The good news is that Republicans are doing a very good job right now showing how bad they are, with this weak field of presidential hopefuls in all-out pander mode to the far right of their party, and the lockstep support for the Ryan budget showing how extreme they are -- not just on Medicare but on a wide range of other major issues. And I feel good about many of the Obama team's moves so far this cycle, especially creating Democratic unity around opposition to Ryan's budget.

However, as is obvious to pretty much everyone who follows politics at all (and probably a fair share of people who don't), the continued problems with our economic trajectory is going to remain a serious problem dragging down the president's re-election chances. Conventional economists and D.C. politicos, who generally focus on fiscal policy to the exclusion of just about everything else, feel stymied because they feel like the economy needs another fiscal stimulus package, and they know that is the exact opposite direction that House Republicans want to go. As a result, most people in Washington have pretty much given up on improving the economy between now and the 2012 election, and are devising strategies for Obama around running without the background of an improving economy.