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The Spectacle Blog
I came across this post-mortem of the mid-term elections by Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun-Times.
It’s the kind of typical left-wing blather one might expect. Mitchell calls anyone with the temerity to disagree with President Obama “a fear-monger.”
But that’s not what caught my attention. Take note of this passage:
I suppose that the president should not have revamped the health-care system, propped up the auto and banking industries and reined in Wall Street before coming up with a miracle that would have put the vast majority of those now unemployed back to work.
Apparently, two years ago, many of us were not listening.
During his campaign for the White House, Obama told Americans a cold-hearted truth that went in one ear and out the other:
Many of the jobs that have disappeared are not coming back.
Now as someone who paid close attention to Obama’s campaign and attended one of his rallies in New Hampshire, I cannot recall him ever telling his audiences that jobs have disappeared and aren’t coming back. Frankly, I’m not sure how that would have fit into the whole hope and change narrative.
Obama certainly didn’t say jobs weren’t coming back when he announced he was running for President. Nor did Obama say jobs weren’t coming back when he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination. That, of course, was the speech he made with the Greek columns as a backdrop. Not only did Obama not tell the American electorate jobs weren’t coming back he spoke about investing $150 billion in affordable, renewable energy over the following decade. Obama called his plan “an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.”
If none of us were listening to Barack Obama’s dire warnings about jobs it is because he never gave them. So I don’t know what Mary Mitchell speaks of when she evokes Obama as this cautious, sober figure he’s never been.
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More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/11/04/when-did-obama-say-jobs-werent
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IndianaWon | 11.4.10 @ 8:47PM
Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession."
Appearing at a fundraiser with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) in Milwaukee, the vice president remarked that by the time he and President Obama took office in 2008, the gross domestic product had shrunk and hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost.
Milton Quaffalot| 11.4.10 @ 9:46PM
Actually, it was McCain who talked about jobs that weren't coming back:
"Some jobs that have left Michigan are not coming back." - Remarks in Livonia, MI 1/12/2008
"...overhaul unemployment insurance and our redundant and outmoded programs for assisting workers who have lost a job that's not coming back" - Remarks following the WI Primary, 2/19/2008
"I'll work with Congress and the states to make job training and unemployment insurance what they should be -- a swift path from a job that's not coming back to a job that won't go away. " - Remarks in Pittsburgh 4/15/2008
There are several more examples of McCain using this line.
Dixie Pixie| 11.5.10 @ 11:19AM
Good point Milton.
It was John McCain who stated to the voters that those good manufacturing jobs of yesteryear were not coming back. McCain then implied he would not even try to help. As a result the voters bought the whole “Hope and Change” rhetoric. After all why vote for the guy who blew off voters concerns. The reason McCain lost the election was he was consistently blowing holes in his own campaign.
What is interesting is a John McCain quote was confused with a Obama quote. It looks like the Liberals are starting to realize that the only jobs Obama cares about is his own.
Flabby McHoosier| 11.4.10 @ 10:19PM
As a matter of economics, in any contraction, some jobs in fact will not come back. It depends on how one looks at it. If by some miracle tomorrow the unemployment rate was zero, certain broad swaths of jobs would be gone. Let's not forget, capitalism is a continual process of 'creative destruction.'
Bill Husssein O'Stalin| 11.4.10 @ 10:32PM
It's irrelevant whether he said it or not. Obama is a job destroyer, expanding all government functions to make it impossible to start or continue to run a business.
Three major pieces of legislation passed by Obama have all contained out of control gender and race preferences which make liability rates go up for companies. Combine that with his proposed cap and trade and his general put down of the business community for using private jets while he takes government trips that cost $100 million for a two day junket, and you can clearly see there is no reason to create jobs in America.
In short, whether he said it or not is irrelevant. He means it.
Bob From District 9| 11.5.10 @ 9:41AM
If you spoke the truth you might have some credibility.
He only put down the executives who took private jets to fly to Washington to ask for government money. If GW Gush had done that maybe they would have caught on to the notion of humility.
There is no reason to create jobs in America because there are not enough customers in America to justify it. Thanks to GW Bush, the republican party, and their enablers like you, America is on the road to third world status.
Freedom Now| 11.6.10 @ 7:40AM
Oh you mean the executives that Obama claimed he would oppose before he started making sweetheart deals with them and giving them bailout candy.
Pete| 11.4.10 @ 11:46PM
Obama told Americans a truth? LIAR!!!
ironhorzmn| 11.5.10 @ 12:09AM
Another liberal lying through his teeth.
Dog bites man.
Dropping By| 11.5.10 @ 2:14AM
If memory serves, Obama said jobs weren't coming back during the 2008 campaign stop in San Francisco, when he was talking to a bunch of elitist supporters -- privately, he thought -- and said that folks in Pennsylvania are sad and nervous and so they cling to guns and religion. I think his bleak assessment of PA's future was the antecedent for his (widely derided) later comments.
Bob From District 9| 11.5.10 @ 10:56AM
Is there an honest right winger in this world?
Obama and McCain both said *THOSE* jobs weren't coming back. They both expect them to be replaced by other jobs.
I think they are both wrong, but honesty requires you to acknowledge what they said is the common wisdom. Or unwisdom.
And get your quotes right. You edited the quote, and took it out of context. Unless you are one of the rich among the right, he was talking about you. He was asked why people vote against their own interests, like you do. He responded by referring to the republican mantra of Guns God and Gays.
He did phrase it differently, but you cut out the last part, as so many right wingers do, because that shows the clear linkage to republican appeals to fear and prejudice.
Fear and hate always go together. Try to abandon both. Speak truthfully and you will change even your own opinion.
bagsbeauty | 11.5.10 @ 4:29AM
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ggoblue| 11.5.10 @ 6:39AM
he stood in front of the autoworkers at macomb county community college and said "these jobs are gone and they aren't coming back".
my guess is around may of 2009.
search the database of the macomb daily or the detroit news. do not support the commie detroit free press with any web hits. [thats a joke they covered it too]
ggoblue| 11.5.10 @ 7:39AM
he spoke on july 14 2009
Bob From District 9| 11.5.10 @ 10:47AM
Everybody said that during the election, Obama, Biden and McCain.
"*THOSE* jobs are not coming back." They will be replaced by other jobs.
Which, BTW, I do not believe, many of those jobs can come back, if we want them to enough to do the work.
But both sides say they will not. And said it repeatedly. They have all bought into the information/knowledge/technology based jobs myth.
Tenn Slime| 11.5.10 @ 9:46AM
As a student of the Historical Left. Aesopian language always prevails.
You NEVER get a straight, understandable answer from any of the Left. It simply is not in thier capability to do so.
Aesopoian, Indirect, esoteric, abstract, lengthy responses that divert, digress, and demean the questioner are the standard templates.
Biden, Obama, Podesta, Axelrod, etal are masters at this. Ask a simple Yes or No question and the frown is on. They just cannot answer.
Note Pelosi's answer when asked about the Constituionality of the OBMACARE Mandate, "Are you kidding?". She knew the answer but was amazed that the questioner did too...
Semper Fi
We ARE PREVAILING.
Bob From District 9| 11.5.10 @ 10:50AM
You are only prevailing if you consider turning America into a third world country as your victory.
The left gives you evasive answers? Nah...not really. The right, on the other hand, actually does lie to you.
And Obama care and Medicare are *EQUALLY* unconstitutional. Think that one through.
Dean from Ohio| 11.5.10 @ 11:18AM
@Bob from District 9
Bob, I appreciate your desire to hold all sides to the same standard. Unfortunately, it seems you're concentrating on detail (however worthwhile) and missing the larger point. This point is that that Mary Mitchell seems to be walking back the rhetoric that Barack Obama used, which he could never fulfill. This gaping mismatch was part of what earned him the century-class shellacking administered on Tuesday November 2.
Whether it's the sea not rising, or unemployment not increasing above 8 percent, or abortions not being funded under Obamacare, or any taxes not being raised on people earning under $250,000, or being able to keep your doctor,or 72 hours time to review all bills posted on the internet, or not having lobbyists in key Administration roles, or or tens or hundreds of other such promises, President Obama promised what he could not deliver, and predicted what did not come true. Trying to cover up the predictions to make the gap less appalling is dishonest.
I commend your search for honesty. Just please apply it to all sides. And hyperbole aside, please do not assume that ten posts that don't agree with you over 12 hours on a Spectator blog proves that your opponents are dishonest.