Election Malfunction, or The Economy is Doing Better, Stupid.

"It's the Economy, Stupid", a phrase popularized during President Clinton's '92 election campaign, has become a political trope, thought of almost like an immutable law.  And this election season it looks like it's playing out, just not with any discernible sense.

From a CNN Poll on the state of the economy: (emphasis added)

According to the survey, more Americans hold the Republicans responsible than the Democrats, with 44 percent blaming the GOP and 35 percent picking the Democrats.

"And when George W. Bush's name is added to the mix, the number who blame the Republicans rises to 53 percent, with just a third saying that Barack Obama and his party are at fault. That indicates why the Democrats are likely to mention Bush's name every chance they get between now and election day," Holland said.

But according to numbers released Friday, just four in 10 Americans say they approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing on the economy. The 40 percent who give Obama a thumbs up is a new low for the president on the economy in CNN polling.

The majority is not wrong on who is to blame. However, the majority also doesn't approve of how Obama is handling the economy.

Well let's see how he's handled it so far.

From huffingtonpost (again, emphasis added):

" Economist Robert Shapiro looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics data and concluded:

From December 2007 to July 2009 - the last year of the Bush second term and the first six months of the Obama presidency, before his policies could affect the economy - private sector employment crashed from 115,574,000 jobs to 107,778,000 jobs. Employment continued to fall, however, for the next six months, reaching a low of 107,107,000 jobs in December of 2009. So, out of 8,467,000 private sector jobs lost in this dismal cycle, 7,796,000 of those jobs or 92 percent were lost on the Republicans' watch or under the sway of their policies. Some 671,000 additional jobs were lost as the stimulus and other moves by the administration kicked in, but 630,000 jobs then came back in the following six months. The tally, to date: Mr. Obama can be held accountable for the net loss of 41,000 jobs (671,000 - 630,000), while the Republicans should be held responsible for the net losses of 7,796,000 jobs.

That means that Obama's policies (largely the ARRA Stimulus) changed a job loss rate of 7,796K in about a year and a half to a job loss rate of 41K in about the same period of time.  I.e. 99% of jobs lost happened entirely before Obama's policies took effect.
Here's a handy chart from ezraklein:

So overall we have stopped the job losses. What we haven't seen are net job gains. But the big question is, how reasonable is it to expect net job gains this quickly after the crash?  I would suggest that it's not reasonable at all.

So there we go, the majority of the electorate, expect the Democrats to do something that is unreasonable, and will not count the herculean successes already achieved by the administration as good enough to meet their approval...


Or as Sam Seder tweeted it:

 "Now we know -- it takes 8 years of GOP control to totally fuck up our economy and only 18 months to blame Dems for it." 


The economy isn't fully recovered, but it's a lot healthier under Democratic control than it was under the Republicans. But I guess most people don't understand that the economy is doing better, stupid.