Progressives who despised Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s now suddenly admire him. In fact, they compare their political messiah Barack Hussein Obama to Reagan. Like Reagan, they claim Obama was elected in a realignment election. They compare the Bush years to the Carter years. Progressives say like Regan, Obama inherited a weak economy and demoralized nation. The 2010 mid term elections are compared to the 1982 elections. The Left even goes so far as to compare the killing of Bin Laden to Reagan’s invasion of Granada.
Where Obamabots really go off the rails is in comparing the economic recoveries. They said like Reagan, Obama policies are setting off a boom. They confidently predict that by November 2012, the public will reward Obama with a landslide! It seems this belief in prominent in the White House itself. In fact taking a page from Reagan 1984’s campaign, the Obama Regime plans to run on a morning in America theme.
Is it morning in America? Or is now a time for blood, sweat, toil and tears? As the United States warms up for the presidential elections, the choice between those two narratives will be the most important decision each party makes and may determine who wins in 2012.
Both are ways of talking about the economy — the issue that polls show overwhelmingly preoccupies U.S. voters. The morning-in-America storyline is that the financial crisis is over, the economy is healing and the country’s innate powers of renewal, reinvention and innovation are already asserting themselves. The blood, sweat, toil and tears view is that the U.S. economy is still sick and that it will take a significant, arduous and collective effort to nurse it back to health.
For now, the White House is committed to morning in America.
[….]
Robert Wolf, chairman of UBS Americas, and one of Mr. Obama’s earliest supporters on Wall Street, agreed, and accused the news media of painting an overly bleak picture of the economy: “Since I sat here a year ago, we have two million jobs that have been created,” he said. “Exports have gone up by 10 percent and technology is booming, agriculture is booming. But when you look at the TV you hear what we are not doing well. I believe we have built a foundation and are on the right path.”
Read the rest: America’s economy: glass half full?
So it’s the fault of TV shows that Americans don’t feel the Obama Boom? If the economy was undergoing a Reagan style recovery, people would be feeling it. Normally, it would be suicide for any President to run on a morning again in America theme in this anemic economy. Obama has the luxury of a complaint press that keeps making excuses for the under performing economy. Any little good news is trumpeted as a sign that the boom has begun.
Here is a chart showing the reality of the Reagan recover vs. the Obama Boom.
Barack Hussein Obama is not Ronald Reagan. This anemic recovery is not the Reagan recovery of the early 80’s. If the Obama Regime runs on “morning again in America“, reality will hit them come November 2012.
Update: Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg is warning the Obama Regime not to push the Obama Boom theme.
But behind the scenes, there is a fierce debate in Democratic circles about just how much Obama should also be focused on explaining the recent past. As it now stands, the President’s stump speech features a backward-looking message at its core. Obama trumpets “more than 2 million jobs in the private sector” that have been created in the last 15 months. At a recent speech in Ohio he dismissed May’s bad jobs numbers as “bumps on the road to recovery.” In Greenberg’s estimation, this is an error on par with President Obama’s midterm election pitch, which described the nation as a car that had just gotten out of a ditch that Republicans drove into in the first place. The metaphor didn’t work, Greenberg explained in a recent memo, because “people thought they were still in the ditch.”
Those close to Obama say Greenberg is drawing the wrong conclusions. “Nobody is hanging a mission accomplished sign on the economy,” shoots back David Axelrod, the President’s top message adviser who is now working on the reelection campaign.
I’m glad the Obama campaign is dismissing Greenberg’s warning. It will make it that much easier for our side to attack Obama. The Obama Boom is a myth and most Americans know it.
