My guess is that Marco Rubio is speaking now as I write these lines, serving up a fitting introduction for the nominee – or Rominee – of last resort for the Republican party. A speech filled with platitudes about freedom from, I don’t know, the tyranny of a pension or reliable health insurance in your old age, spoken by the son of escapees from communist Cuba. As Ryan put it on Wednesday night, the present-day G.O.P. sees everything to the left of Ayn Rand as sclerotic socialism, including legislative initiatives – like the individual mandate and cap and trade – that they themselves invented only a handful of years ago. (Ryan himself couldn’t even stick to his Randian creed for three minutes, decrying a nanny state where “everything is free except you” then paying tribute to the Medicare his mother purportedly depends on.)

I don’t know about these guys, but that “everything free” part probably sounds pretty attractive to a lot of Americans right now. While they equate Obama with Castro, Barry is much, much closer to them than he is to the bearded one in Havana. Would that he had put his shoulder behind expanding Medicare instead of this republican inspired, Heritage Foundation formulated health insurance scheme they call “Obamacare”. Would that he had committed himself to full employment along the lines of what Robert Pollin is recommending, among others. Those are positions worth defending. The problem Obama has right now is not the Republicans … it is his own flaccid liberalism, hopelessly compromised from the first stage of negotiation.

In truth, the Republicans, led by millionaire Romney, should be easy as hell to beat. They have zero credibility on the economy, no track record to speak of. Obama at least had the Clinton years – what does Romney have? The Republicans crashed the economy; now they want the driver’s seat back. They nearly destroyed the empire it took decades of rapacious interventionism to build. They have an ex-president, a mere four years out of office, that played no role in their convention. Did anyone mention him even once? They appear to think that by disowning the historically incompetent Bush/Cheney and pretending not to remember their tenure that they can induce amnesia amongst the rest of the body politic. They believe that by pointing elsewhere and crying “thief”, they can rob again.

Now that the balloons have fallen on Romney/Ryan (and we have been treated to the spectacle of evident dementia-sufferer Clint Eastwood rambling aimlessly on national television), it’s fair to respond to that question they always ask four years into an opponent’s presidency – namely, are you better off than you were four years ago. Four years ago, we were in free fall, the credit system of the world’s largest economy was shutting down, and hundreds of thousands were being thrown out of work. Four years ago, Bush’s war of choice in Iraq was still killing young soldiers by the dozen. Unless you’re as demented as Clint Eastwood, you probably remember all that.

Yes, we’re better off than we were in 2008. Still not good, but it takes a lot of work to get out of a hole as deep as the one Romney’s party dug us into.

luv u,

jp