1115.org

(1)
President Bush is trying to make presidential remarks about the economy again.

Touring a maritime training center in Maryland on Labor Day, he said:

To make sure that we’re the economic leader of the world, we got to keep taxes low.

Funny, isn’t it, how we used to be the economic leader of the world back in the bad old days when taxes were so high? Then Bush came along and cut taxes. And now we’re struggling to be the economic leader of the world.

(2)
Reuters informs us:

A Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives or the Senate would undermine Bush’s ability to push his agenda in his last two years…

I do so hate incomplete reporting. Why couldn’t they explain what has undermined Bush’s ability to push his agenda for the last six years? He does have some sort of agenda beyond the war on Iraq, TWAT and tax cuts, right?

(3)

Democrat candidates have made growing income inequality, wage stagnation, and a ballooning federal deficit under Bush a top theme in their campaigns.

Bush administration officials have pointed to data like last week’s employment report — which showed a solid payroll gain of 128,000 in August and a dip in the unemployment rate to 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent — as evidence that Bush’s tax cuts put the economy on a strong growth path.

True, the election-time version of economy poker is not as well understood as Texas Hold-‘em, but it sure looks to me like the Democrats hold the winning hand. Rove and Bush are betting that all the voters whose wages have stagnated while the economy grew for eighteen straight quarters, all the voters whose real income has declined under Bush, all these poor sods can be persuaded that the performance of the economy is a feather in Bush’s cap. In my poker book, that isn’t called a bet, it’s called a bluff.

What baffles me is how Rove and Bush have sold this strategy to themselves. They really think people don’t know when they’re hurting financially? That they can be persuaded by speeches and statistics that they aren’t really hurting after all? That you can take them by the hand and lead them to the rose-tinted window and show them that the unemployment rate dropped from 4.8% to 4.7%, and they’re going to go: “Great! I must be doing okay then. Wonder why I ever thought I wasn’t?”

Previously:
July 11: Growth of the Compassionately Conservative Economy
July 19: What Bush Prays For Every Night