The national media (represented by the New York Times) is starting to call the economic situation what it really is (and actually has been for quite a while): a recession.
Despite the corporate media's notorious reluctance to report bad news about the economy, the business sections of national, regional, and local newspapers will be dominated by the issue in the days and weeks to come.
Why? Because things have gotten so bad they can't be covered up any more.
Americans feel it, too:
In the latest NYT/CBS News Poll, a whopping 62% said they think the economic situation is worsening. (4% said it's getting better, 33% said it stays the same)
Last time this poll revealed such pessimism was October 1990!
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pd f/national/01142008_pollgraphics.pdf)
The bad economic news might alter the environment of the presidential campaign profoundly.
Lofty speeches of 'Change' will ring increasingly hollow to people worried about job security, gas prices, mortgage rates, health care costs, college tuitions. The 'Global War On Terror' might get exposed to be, among other things, a giant waste of the American taxpayers' money. Wedge issues like flag-burning, gay marriage, school prayer, will lose some salience on people's personal agenda. Instead, the candidates' economic positions will get more important - and come under closer scrutiny. Economic policies aren't called bread-and-butter issues for nothing!
(In the same NYT/CBS poll, 20% of Americans called the economy the greatest problem, while 16% named 'Iraq', 10% 'Other', and 7% 'health care'. 'Moral Values' and 'Crime' each scored 1%, 'Abortion' even less.)
According to Paul Krugman in today's New York Times, this new focus on the economy might improve John Edwards standing with the voters, for he's the best-prepared:
"On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party's policy agenda. He's done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures."
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinio n/14krugman.html?hp)
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