In September, Democrats wrote a "jobs bill" that promised to save thousands of American jobs by erasing incentives for outsourcing. The bill offered a tax break for multinational companies that moved overseas jobs back to the United States. It promised to pay for this tax break for multinational companies by, well, taxing multinational companies.
It was a stupid, limited, and purely political bill designed to lure Republicans into a No vote to make them look like China apologists. In fact, the bill would have been nearly impossible to enforce. How does a company prove it has eliminated an overseas job? Was Congress willing to fly Chuck Schumer assistants to Bangalore to oversee the firing of call assistants? Just absurd.
Well, sure enough, we're two weeks from election day and the DCCC is running ad after ad slamming Republicans for their reasonable vote. The Democrats will almost certainly be smoked for more than 40 House seats, and politics being politics, I'll accept that parties say things they don't mean in the run-up to an election.
But what if this is more than a November issue? What if trade wars become The Issue in 2011, and the China bashing continues well into the new year?