To the editor:

Lest we forget, when President Obama took office the country was on the brink of financial disaster. Owing to the bankrupt Republican economic policies that drastically reduced taxes for the wealthy, spent uncontrollably on two wars, and did nothing to replace the lost revenue, we went from a $250 billion-plus surplus when George Bush took office to a $1 trillion-plus deficit when he crawled out of town and sidled back to Texas eight disastrous years later.

Since President Obama took office, he has had the very unpleasant job of first stopping the economy’s downward spiral and then slowly turning it around to begin the long slog back out of the deep canyon the Republicans put us in. He has done a wonderful job. Let’s look at just a few of his many accomplishments.

• Auto industry bailout. GM is now solvent. Very soon the government’s interest in GM will be sold to private owners. There is every reason to believe that taxpayers will be reimbursed fully and may even make a profit. Reaction to this news from the right-wing? The sound of crickets.

• Deficit reduction. New figures just out show that the budget deficit for this past year was 8-percent lower than the previous year. Yes, that previous year included much of George Bush’s deficit legacy. President Obama’s enlightened economic policies are starting to turn the Republicans’ deficit-generating policies around. Reaction to this news from the right wing? More crickets.

• Job creation. Although still too slow to satisfy Democratic policymakers and President Obama, we have begun the slow process of creating jobs. The economy was losing jobs at a record pace when George Bush left office and the job-loss rate was increasing. Within a few short months of taking over the reins of government, President Obama reversed the downward trend in job loss, and we are now in the position of actually gaining jobs each month — this is attributable to President Obama’s stimulus plan that has worked as intended. Most economists agree that more stimulus was needed to turn the economy around faster, but then there was the “Party of No” (also known as the Republican Party) preventing a larger stimulus bill from passing the Senate.

Still don’t believe stimulus works? Talk to the 80-plus shipyard workers at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Freeland who owe their jobs to stimulus money.

What did Dino Rossi have to say about this fact during his recent tour of the shipyard? Still more crickets.

The lesson is clear — don’t listen to the right-wing nattering nabobs of negativism. They refuse to give President Obama credit for any of his numerous accomplishments. Their only hope this election cycle is to deceive you into accepting that Democratic policies have failed and that they can somehow do better. Since they are devoid of any meaningful ideas or policies, they are desperate to demoralize Democrats to suppress Democratic turnout, because if we participate in the democratic process, we win — it’s that simple.

Get off your duffs, Democrats, and participate in the upcoming elections. If you do nothing but vote for all of your terrific candidates, that will be enough to prevent the keys to our country, state and county from being turned over to the party that drove us into the ditch in the first place.

If you don’t participate, then get used to more of the Bush policies that virtually ruined this country during his eight-year reign. It’s your choice.

Nels Kelstrom

Clinton