I'm sitting here listening to a combination of hand-wringing by Dems and chops-licking by Rs as the pundits on MSNBC discuss how "difficult" and "complex" it is to answer the question of the day:
Are we better off today than we were 4 years ago? "They can't say no, because that means Obama has failed.""They can't say yes, because the people don't feel it, so they would sound out-of-touch."
"They can't say 'Osama bin-Laden is dead and GM is alive' because those aren't the kinds of things most Americans are thinking about when they hear that question."
Maybe I'm missing the nuances (though it seems unlikely; usually my problem is that I'm unable to ignore nuances and get to the core message), but it seems to me there's a very simple answer to that question:
Yes, we're a million jobs a month better off than we were when President Obama was inaugurated! We lost almost 800,000 jobs in January 2009, and we've gained over 150,000 jobs per month in 2012.That's a difference of almost a million jobs every month!
Imagine if we were still losing 800,000 jobs a month -- or 500,000, or even 200,000. What would our unemployment rate be? The Republicans want to take us from policies that enable us to create 200,000 jobs per month -- and are projected to create 12 million jobs over the next 4 years -- to the policies that caused us to lose Eight. Hundred. Thousand. Jobs. Per. Month.
It shows, using objective, inarguable facts, that Obama has not failed.It addresses the critical issue -- jobs.
It reminds people of the causes of our current misery, without mentioning the name Bush.
It makes clear the necessity of staying the course instead of turning control back over to the people who put us in this situation.