If it wasn’t for the fact that so many people are suffering and being seduced into empty lives of government dependency (symbolized by Julia, the world’s most disappointing daughter), I might feel sorry for President Obama.
He promised unemployment would never climb above 8 percent if Congress squandered $800 billion on a Keynesian stimulus scheme.
Well, Congress said yes and the results have not been pretty. And every month we get new numbers to show us that the Administration’s policies have failed. It’s like Chinese water torture for the White House.
The numbers released this morning from the Department of Labor don’t change the narrative. The Republican and Democratic spin-doctors obviously will spit out their talking points, but here’s a visual put together by Political Math that trumps all the political maneuvering. If you’re wondering where Obama is, look at the lower left portion of the image.
This image is a couple of months old, but job creation has been so anemic that the naked eye wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if it was updated
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Since I normally show a graph with the actual unemployment rate compared to what Obama promised, I’ll add that as well. Not a pretty picture. I wrote that last month’s version would cause anxiety for Obama, and see no reason to change that assessment.
Yes, the official unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent, but that was because more Americans dropped out of the labor force.
Most important, the rate of joblessness is about 2-1/2 to 3 percentage points higher than what Obama promised. Now he wants a second term, yet all he’s promising is more of the same.
Actually, I retract that statement. He wants to maintain his current approach, but then add some class-warfare taxes to the mix.
Three States Flip in New Projection of 2012 Electoral Map, but Obama Still Leads
Three months ago, I predicted that Obama would win reelection with 297 electoral votes, 27 more than needed.
Back in July, I shifted Virginia to Romney’s column and predicted Obama would still win, but with 284 votes.
Last month, I predicted things were moving even farther in the GOP direction. By moving Colorado to the Republican side, I guessed the outcome would be 275-263 for Obama.
Romney partisans will be disappointed to learn, though, that their candidate has fallen a bit further behind in my new prediction for the 2012 election.
The big change is that I moved Florida to the “leaning Obama” category and those 29 electoral votes more than offset the impact of shifting Iowa and Wisconsin to the “leaning Romney” column.
Why these changes? Well, I suspect that the demagoguery on Social Security and Medicare will hurt in Florida, even though the GOP platform on entitlement reform is that people over age 55 are exempt.
I’m shifting Wisconsin because of Paul Ryan. As for Iowa, I’m going by nothing but gut instinct.
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