Democrats for Tax Cuts...a typo?

[LovetoGiveRoses]

Democrats at a loss for investors' votes

Donald Lambro - Washington Times 9/5/02.

Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe changed his party's message on Labor Day weekend. After months of bashing President Bush's tax cuts, he now says Democrats also want to cut taxes to stimulate the economy.

"People are worried about their economic future and, when they vote on Nov. 5, they are going to be looking to the Democrats to put people back to work," Mr. McAuliffe told me in an interview Friday, the start of the holiday weekend and the traditional kickoff of the election season.

Sounding a new campaign theme that hasn't been heard in his party, Mr. McAuliffe called for "tax cuts that will get this economy moving again. We want to cut taxes for middle-class Americans and for small businesses."

This tax-cutting message must be a surprise to Democratic congressional leaders who have been relentlessly pounding the Bush tax cuts, blaming them for just about every problem the country faces. But the fact remains that, while Democrats complain a lot about the economic slump, they have not offered a plan to do anything about it.

I doubt that the rest of the party will pick up Mr. McAuliffe's new tax cut theme. If Democrats have a plan to cut taxes for middle-class America, it has been one of the best-kept secrets of the 2002 midterm elections. So, why is he pushing this message now?

The answer can be found in a memorandum titled "Why The Democratic Attacks Aren't Working" that was sent around to party officials late last month by Matthew Dowd, President Bush's campaign pollster. Forget about the GOP gender gap that the pundits are always talking about, Mr. Dowd says. The Democrats suffer from a much bigger problem: The investor gap.

Two-thirds of all likely voters are invested in the stock market, and they are supporting Republicans over Democrats, 45 percent to 32 percent. Surprisingly, this margin has grown since January when the GOP advantage among investors was 40 percent to 32 percent.

"Today, Democrats are having difficulty at the polls to a large degree because of their inability to garner a competitive number of votes among this rather dominant group of voters who invest," Mr. Dowd's memo says.

"A key reason they don't have strong support is the party's lack of a clearly defined economic agenda as a companion to their attacks.

"Further complicating things for Democrats is the fact that this investing group of voters is more moderate than non-investors, contains a larger share of union households, is split evenly between men and women, and nearly two-thirds of the women in this group work outside the home," he says.

Needless to say, with two out of every three voters in this group, this poses a immense political gap for the Democrats to overcome.

This is not to say that investors, who tend to be more optimistic than the rest of the electorate, are happy campers. Though worried about their retirement and savings, investors understand that "while things are not where they would like them, the market has a tendency to rise over time," Mr. Dowd says.

Investors also understand the relationship between the long-term health of the economy and lower tax rates, free trade agreements and less regulation of businesses.

Evidence of this growing voter gap may be what drove Mr. McAuliffe to call for a midcourse correction in his party's message. He, too, has seen polls showing his party is not doing well with investors and has concluded that the Democrats are going to have to find a way to appeal to this pivotal group of voters or else lose on Election Day.

Investors, perhaps more than any other group, feel overtaxed. Their capital gains are taxed. Their dividends are taxed. Their savings are taxed. The White House is working on a campaign plan to cut these taxes, but they are not on the radar screen for the Democrats.

According to the dominant media culture here, taxes are not an issue for voters. But it is an issue out in the real world.

Earlier this summer, Missouri residents voted on a ballot referendum to raise the state gasoline sales tax to pay for needed statewide road and bridge repairs. Pollster John Zogby, who did focus-group surveys on the issue, was convinced that the proposal would be "a slam dunk," since voters loudly complained about the disrepair of state highways. Not so.

They overwhelmingly crushed the tax increase by a vote of 71 percent to 29 percent.

"I walked out of focus groups where they beat this thing up. And I'm not just talking about conservative, anti-tax people, but liberal professors were against it, too," Mr. Zogby told me. "I was amazed. They don't think the money will be spent well by the government."

With Congress and the electorate evenly divided, this will be one of the closest midterm elections in decades. But two things are clear. Investors will be the key factor in its outcome, and the Democrats are still struggling to put together an agenda that appeals to them.

 

[Johnny Cool]

In all fairness(I know we're dealing with the Washington Times but still) Democrats have always been in favour of a tax cut, just not one that only lines the pockets of Rich Uncle Pennybags.

 

[brokenbrainwave]

its called playing the game...funny how they mention tax cuts less than two months before a major election. Its about as large of a vote buying effort as the republicans did in '94 with all that Contract with America crap.

 

[SINthysist]

Someone forgot to tell Hillary. On Newsmax she's quoted as saying just yesterday that she was in favor of raising taxes to cover the cost of Iraq...

 

[SINthysist]

It went something like this

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 12:32 p.m. EDT
Hillary: Tax Hike Needed to Fight Iraq

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she supports raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to fight a war in Iraq, adding that the federal government also needs more money to fund homeland security.

"I think if we're in a war and we're thinking about expanding that war to Iraq, you know, the nation and particularly those of us who are in the top 1 to 10 percent of our country's earners, we have to be willing to put our money where our mouths are," she told WABC Radio's John Gambling.

Mrs. Clinton said our homeland security force was also desperately in need of more spending.

"We've not yet put the money into our first responders and into security," she told WABC. "In fact, the firefighters and the police officers of our country have not been given the support from the federal government that they need when they answered the 9-11 call.

"When it comes to our homeland defenders, "she added, "I don't think we've made the commitment that we need to make yet."

Clinton said that the war on terrorism demanded a new set of budgetary priorities, telling WABC that the Bush tax cut threatened to put the nation back into "the deficit ditch."

"I didn't support the large tax cut because I thought that it was based on phony arithmetic," she said. "There's no way that you could make the numbers work."

Clinton said the same thing happened with the Reagan era tax cuts, complaining, "We've seen this before. This is what was done in the 1980s and it took about eight years to get out of the deficit ditch and to get a surplus so that we could be prepared for rainy days and even terrible tragedies like what happened to us on 9-11."

She continued to criticize the Bush tax cuts, arguing that the nation could no longer afford to be "throwing money" away.

"Now we're back into deficits. Our debt's going up," she noted. "And, yeah, we do have to make hard choices because, frankly, we should not be giving money or throwing money at anything that is not going to pay off."

The leading New York Democrat once again zeroed in on the Bush tax cut, telling WABC, "But here we're in a situation where the administration's only answer to everything that ails us is like the old fashioned medicine man, you know, tax cuts, tax cuts."

Then she made the case for a new war tax to fund an attack on Iraq:

"Well, I think if we're in a war and we're thinking about expanding that war to Iraq, you know, the nation, and particularly those of us who are in the top 1 to 10 percent of our country's earners, we have to be willing to put our money where our mouths are."

The presidential hopeful said that the nation could not have the kind of security it needs if its leaders tried to "do that on the cheap."

"We all want a secure world," she observed. "We all want to be sure when we get on our airplane or our Amtrak that we're safe. Well, you know, you can't do that on the cheap. And you can't do it if you're running up deficits and not paying attention to the fiscal responsibility of the federal government."

 

[SINthysist]

So weed, Sandia, not only is Tony Blair on board, but Hillary is starting to sound like a hawk...

I'm tellin' you, the peacenik wants to be President! She WANTS to control the war! Very EU'ish!

 

[Johnny Cool]

Hey, AJ. At dinner parties do you make sudden, irrelevant digs at Hillary Clinton 2-3 dozen times over the evening. And why does that sound like a dinner party I want to be a part of.

AJ, a bottle of thunderbird in one hand, slumped over the table screaming things like "Hitlery wants to control my shoes" and "Than Ann Coulter is one foxy lady"

 

[SINthysist]

We have Sunday dinners in Rural America...

Politics is never part of the discussion.

Tried once, drunk as hell.

They looked funny as shit going, "Hillary who?"

low post total for A_J...

 

[teddybear4play]

In all fairness(I know we're dealing with the Washington Times but still) Democrats have always been in favour of a tax cut, just not one that only lines the pockets of Rich Uncle Pennybags.

And Republicans usually are in favor of a tax cut for everybody.

TB4p

 

[Sillyman]

Noooooooooo...

*sigh*

I'm surrounded by morons.