Stoking Fond Memories of the 2008 Crash

With the press dutifully echoing the Rethuglican question "are you better off than you were 4 years ago?", it's good to see Dems finally -- finally -- saying yes and explaining why. Actually, answering the question affirmatively gives the Dems an opening to remind voters that before President Obama was inaugurated, the economy was in free-fall: stock market in the 6,000s, 800 thousand jobs lost per month, and our auto industry on the verge of bankruptcy. The last thing weird Willard "Mendacious Mitt" Romney should want to remind voters of is Rethuglican mismanagement of the economy a mere four years ago. (Oh, and bin Laden was safely hiding in Pakistan, not that Dumbya cared where he was). Jamelle Bouie has a good way of approaching the inevitable, if misleading, question:

"'Are you better off' isn’t the right way to evaluate this election, but that doesn’t mean the Obama campaign shouldn’t try to tackle it. After all, the facts are on their side. In the three months before Obama took office, the economic growth plunged. On Inauguration Day 2009, the economy had lost nearly 4 million jobs and was still hemorraging at an unprecedented rate.

With roughly 150,000 new jobs per month and GDP growth of 1.7 percent, there’s no question that we’re better off today than when Obama took office. It’s true that current conditions are on the bad side of mediocre. But that’s just a sign of how terrible things were four years ago."

Exactly, and since the question's been raised by Mendacious Mitt's incompetent campaign and their clueless media enablers, it's good to remind voters of that fact, over and over and over again as long as the question's asked.

(image: Apparently Willard does.)

BONUS: Think Progress has some charts that make the point vividly.