By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Cory Booker (D-Twitter) launched his U.S. Senate reelection campaign last week, Save Jerseyans, but the man who prides himself on being a post-partisan and supremely hip leader chose to rely on some antiquated hyper-political rhetoric.
Specifically? For starters, he accused the GOP nominee Jeff Bell of peddling “voodoo economics.”
How retro! Now, Cory was just 11-years old when George Bush coined the phrase back in 1980 during the GOP primary campaign (I wasn’t yet born). So maybe he simply doesn’t know any better?
Background for Cory’s benefit: Bush Sr. was referring to Ronald Reagan’s strong support for supply-side economics.
Reagan won. Bush took the Veep spot. And the Reagan Revolution ushered in the largest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the United States of America.
This is objective truth; it’s not up for debate. Booker’s buddy President Obama hasn’t come close to touching it. We’re all intimately aware that the former mayor of Newark didn’t perform too well during his time at the helm of New Jersey’s largest city.
The precise details of Reagan’s success, placed in contrast with the current Democrat regime, are even more stunning. Paul Kengor of Fox News recently did a great job of breaking it down:
Real income for a median African-American family had dropped 11 percent from 1977-82; from 1982-89, coming out of the recession, it rose by 17 percent. In the 1980s, there was a 40 percent jump in the number of black households earning $50,000 or more. Black unemployment under Reagan in the 1980s actually fell faster than white unemployment. The number of black-owned businesses increased by almost 40 percent, while the number of blacks who enrolled in college increased by almost 30 percent (white college enrollment increased by only 6 percent).
There were likewise impressive numbers for Hispanics, who saw similar to higher increases in family income, employment, and college enrollment. The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the 1980s grew by an astounding 81 percent, and the number of Hispanics enrolled in college jumped 45 percent.
Liberals often decry the income gap between men and women. Well, under Reagan, women went from earning 60 cents for every dollar a man earned to 71 cents, and their employment and median earnings outpaced their male counterparts. Women enrolled in college in record numbers.
Moreover, the youth of the 1980s certainly got off to a stronger start than my contemporaries:
The peak period of youth unemployment for 16-24 year olds under Reagan was 1982, when it was 17.3%. Reagan reduced it to 10.9% by 1988. Under Obama, the peak for that same group was 19.1%. By 2013, the number was 16.3%.
The unemployment data for 16-19 year olds is even more pronounced. Under Reagan, it fell from 24% in 1982 to 14.8% in 1988. Under Obama, it declined from a high of 25.9% in 2010 to only 22.9% in 2013. The numbers for black Americans aged 16-19 are even stronger in Reagan’s favor. They fell from 49.4% in 1982 to 31.9% in 1988—a vast improvement. Under Obama, they declined from 43.0% in 2010 to only 38.8% in 2013.
So call it whatever derisive term you’d like, Senator. We could use a little “voodoo” right now. You and your president could, too, with the Senate on the line.
