Political Round-up: 1st week of February

Covering Romney's "I don't care about the very poor" gaffe and trying to explain what he really meant is unnecessary, because a) you hate his guts already and are eager to take anything he says out of context, or b) because you already know what he meant.

It's sad, however, that our front-runner keeps saying really stupid stuff. It seems like he has a good opposition researcher, a good debate coach, and a good organization... but whoever tells him what to say (and what not to say) at speeches and during interviews needs to go.

Oh, and he needs a statistician, stat. You probably heard the news that unemployment is down to 8.3%. Romney insisted that Obama can't take the credit for that, and there are more than a few columnists/pundits/bloggers on the Right who insist that the President should send the Republicans a bouquet for causing a gridlock and getting that number down.

Baloney.

No, it's not baloney that Obama doesn't deserve credit for the 8.3% figure. It's that the 8.3% figure is baloney.

This here's a handy-dandy chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and don't get me started about a guy who wants to abolish every alphabet agency aside from the CIA and the FBI using BLS data. They have their uses.

(By the way, I'm not sure why you can't see the far-right side of the chart on the blog. Click it for the full picture.)

Throughout W's second term, real employment - that is to say, the percentage of Americans over 16 who were actively participating in the labor force - hovered around 66%. That's down about a percentage point from the Clinton years, true. Not here to defend W's record on the economy.

Now, isn't 66% low? Doesn't that mean that 34% of all adults weren't working? Aren't those appalling figures? Not particularly. Remember, this is everyone age 16 and up. People were in college. People were retired. And, hey, if it takes two people to support three, we're still way up from the old hunter-gatherer days, when it took 19 people to support 20.

Now, I'm not going to claim that 66% is acceptable and 64 - sorry, 63.7% is an absolute disaster. I mean, yeah, the labor participation is as bad as it's been since... ooh, the early Reagan years.


Oops.

So what we can see here is that Obama has suceeded in driving unemployment numbers down... by driving people out of the workforce completely.

Go back up to that first chart, look at where we were in 1/09 - when Obama took the oath of office - and then tell me if the man deserves any credit whatsoever for turning the economy around.

Don't let the unemployment numbers fool you.

Okay, next up. The Nevada primary is today. Romney's going to win it because (say it with me...) he has more money and a better organization than Gingrich and Santorum. Once again, this is not a valid excuse from Gingrich/Santorum supporters. Obama is going to have more money than them in the general. The only opportunities Newt will have to reach as many people as Obama will be during the debates, and if he stares at his shoes the way he did in Jacksonville...

Oh, wait, silly me. Newt's not going to stare at his shoes during a debate with Obama, because that's never going to happen. Romney's going to be the nominee, and then we'll have four months of unmitigated class warfare followed by four years of a President who just tinkers at the margins.

Or you could always vote for Ron Paul... but that's less likely to move Romney to the right than a Santorum surge. Problem is, Santorum's out of money...