Democrats: Sell the accomplishments of the Stimulus Program
Republicans have been characteristically successful in framing the Stimulus negatively as a waste of money inflating the deficit with nothing to show for it, because in their frame the only criterion of success is a significant reduction in the unemployment rate.
Democrats need to come out swinging and sell the Stimulus' contributions to the betterment of life for Americans.
Consider the following article from Time Magazine: How the Stimulus is Changing America.
Among the accomplishments:
More than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and more
$90 billion into clean energy, including a smart grid, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable power, cleaner coal, advanced biofuels and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S.
$11 billion for a smart grid to distribute renewable power
Triple the number of smart electric meters
Financed three of the world's first electric-car plants
30 new U.S. factories to build advanced batteries for electric vehicles
Boost the number of U.S. batter-charging stations by 3,200 percent
Expansion funding for scores of manufacturers of wind and solar electricity-generating facilities
Finance far-out energy research
Tenfold increase in funding to expand access to broadband
$8 billion for high-speed passenger rail
$4.3 billiion in Race to the Top grants to promote accountability in public schools
$20 billion to computerize health records
Millions of jobs saved and created that would otherwise have dragged us into another Great Depression
Rebates for weatherizing 250,000 homes and countless energy-efficient appliances
Financing for super-efficient lighting, windows and machinery
Retrofitting 3 in 4 federal buildings for energy efficiency. (Government is the nation's largest energy consumer.)
The Recovery Act's Four Investment Goals
Lower solar power's cost 50% by 2015, to put it on par with the retail cost of power from the existing grid
Cut the cost of batteries for electric vehicles 50% by 2013 and eventually reduce the sticker price of an electric car to match that of its gasoline-powered counterpart
Double the U.S.'s renewable-energy-generation capacity (wind, solar and geothermal) as well as its renewable-manufacturing capacity, by 2012
Lower the cost of sequencing an individual human genome to $1,000, enabling scientists to map 50 genomes for the same price as mapping just one today
Democrats need to make videos of these accomplishments and flood the Internet, TV, town meetings, campaign literature, etc. with them.
In short, they need to reframe the Stimulus away from the Republicans’ self-serving and single-minded focus on jobs (which, ironically, they caused to be lost), and toward the very real accomplishments, advantages and benefits provided by the Stimulus.