An article from Bloomberg, of all places, examines the improving economic reports and their effect on the 2012 election:
A surge in new jobs last month that held the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.3 percent highlights a strengthening economy that bolsters President Barack Obama as he approaches the November election .
The jobs report “is another plus for the president,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington.
“These numbers suggest the economy is moving in the right direction,” he said. “It’s likely to make people more optimistic, and that’s always, always good for an incumbent president.”
Employers added 227,000 jobs in February, more than forecast, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The median projection of economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for a 210,000 increase. Job growth was revised upward for the prior two months.
Of course, the Republican spin - which can never admit that Obama could be doing anything right - is that the economy is improving in spite of Obama:
Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator seeking the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination, said today the economy is recovering “in spite of” the Democratic Obama administration’s policies.
“Certainly a quarter of a million jobs, roughly, being added is a positive step forward,” Santorum said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend.
The administration “has consistently seen, you know, bad job reports because of bad policies that have led to those job reports,” he said. “And eventually, you know, the economy does recover, in spite of the headwinds that this administration has put in its place.”
Remember the previous scary scenarios that Republicans promised would have appeared by now. Industry was supposed to nationalised by the "socialist" Obama. We are supposed to be seeing hyper-inflation from the stimulus package. Conservatives are supposed to be locked up in "FEMA death camps", and a national goon squad of AmeriCorps thugs are supposed to be rounding up dissenters. Our guns are supposed to have been confiscated by now, and radical Muslims are supposed to be forcing us to bow to Mecca at gunpoint. Christians are supposed to be fugitives from the powerful Obama's dictatorial agenda. We are supposed to be working in "collectives", where we are forced to sing the praises of our Leader.
Yet, none of this has happened. The incredibly powerful dictator Obama is, instead, "a failed President" who is unable to keep unemployment from going down.
The same braying jackasses who swore that every scary prediction would surely come to pass are now the same people who say that Obama is a powerless incompetent. Remember that.
The economy does not have to be wonderful for Obama to be re-elected. It merely has to be on a upward trend:
While potential threats loom -- such as further gasoline price increases, a war in the Middle East or a worsening of the European debt crisis -- most private forecasts anticipate slow improvement in the unemployment rate in the months before Election Day, Nov. 6.
“Over the last several months, the economy has gone from being a net negative for Obama to probably something close to a wash,” said Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, interviewed before the release of the jobs report.
The trajectory of the economy is typically much more important in presidential elections than the actual unemployment rate, Wlezien said.
“The point is really are we getting better or are we getting worse and how fast is it changing,” Wlezien said. “Whether the unemployment rate is 6 percent or 9 percent matters less.”
Also, underemployment is decreasing:
The so-called underemployment rate, which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking, decreased to a three-year low of 14.9 percent from 15.1 percent.
Consumer confidence is also increasing:
The strengthening economy is beginning to translate into greater public optimism, even with recent increases in gasoline prices.
Consumer confidence climbed to a four-year high last week, according to the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index (COMF). For a fifth straight week, half of those surveyed also rated their personal finances as positive, bolstered by a resilient stock market, faster job growth and rising wages.
The Commerce Department last week reported that the economy grew at a 3 percent annual pace in the final quarter of 2011, up from a 1.8 percent gain the prior three months.
The economy is supposed to be the Republicans' trump card. The "hated tyrant" narrative isn't really panning out for them right now. Outside of the Republican base, voters really aren't scared by Obama, nor do they think of him as a "dictator". And, let's face it, the GOP's plan of big tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens combined with removing any checks on their already disproportionate influence has not exactly caught on with the electorate outside of their base.
