Uh, Brad, This is How You Do It

If your question—correctly—is “why Axelrod and Plouffe were satisfied,” then you have to think like people whose vote support came, in some significant numbers, from people who were just entering the workforce in 2008 (and who did not show up in 2010 because, having entered, they found they were unwelcome).

Which means, if you’re any good at your political job at all, you’re looking at that graph this way:

To see if your “maybe going to be lifetime supporters” are getting into the workforce or about to have a very short lifetime.

(Note that I have been very generous—that is, in the Administration’s favor—with the assumption of a 120K/month “assimilation rate.” YMMV, but is unlikely to put that bar lower.)

You know I disagree with BarryO’s idiotic acceptance of (1)-(7), most especially (2)and (4). I’ve been using the phrase “cursive-Z recession” since at least December of 2009; the only person outside of the Administration who expected a “V-shaped” employment recovery was Bryan Caplan, and he was only willing to bet $100 on it, with a much longer time frame. The Administration has produced a result where the only way Obama makes it to the November 2012 election as the odds-on favorite—even against the current array of Luddites and doofuses—is if he has Timmeh gutted and flayed very publicly, and then walks through Zuccotti Park with his head on a pike,* and even then I’m not certain that’s the way to bet. (In fact, I’ve bet Lance Mannion the other way.)

If you’re talking political calculations, we’ve been hearing for three years how great Alexrod and Plouffe are at their jobs, mainly because they could beat an old man and The Quitter who wanted to continue the policies of the previous eight years, only moreso. (Oh, and that they weren’t Mark Penn, which seems to be the motivating factor for Scott “play the manager, not the player or the ball” Lemieux.) And for three years, they have gotten their arses handed to them, in large part because they are stupider than the Cheney team, and thought that kicking their base would be “motivational” for someone other than Mitch McConnell.

Maybe they can’t read the above graphic; maybe they’re thinking of it the same way you drew it. But I’ll give you odds the voters aren’t. They’re thinking more about the graphic in the upper-right corner of your website. You know, this one:

And they’ve been hearing “prosperity is just around the corner” from that crack political team for so long that, as Michael J. Fox’s character once mouthed Aaron Sorkin’s words said, “in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone….They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

Welcome to the Sands of Romney-Rubio-Perry-Christie, Brad. Because the people you talk with read the graph you drew, not the one I’m showing. And may your G-d have mercy on their souls for it.

*Yes, I mean this literally, and, no, I am not advocating it. As I said on Twitter, describing Tim Geithner as a “career regulator” is like describing Willie Sutton as a “career bank manager.”