The US Presidency 2018

[Altair]

There is a third party already: the socialist left wing of the Democrat Party. One ran for POTUS last election. One just became a Congresswoman elect.

That's the problem. With two party systems that use the big tent theory.

You have to let a bunch of crazies under the tent.

 

[Brad Sallows]

There are too many moving parts to do more than make barely educated guesses.  Might someone mount a primary challenge if Trump runs for a second term?  Will the Democratic candidate come from the establishment sub-faction, or the Bernie Sanders sub-faction?  About the only thing I'm sure of is that the USSC composition will be a greater factor than it already is.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

I find it hard to believe that a president with a 40 percent approval rating is a lock to win another term.

As long as the democrats don't pick a moron to lead them, I think they have a chance.

And as long as the faux outrage machine continues unabated, they stand a good chance of losing....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lefts-contempt-is-going-to-reelect-trump/2018/07/03/8e91b240-7ede-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.51a5b4daa4d8

The left’s contempt is going to reelect Trump

by Marc A. Thiessen  July 4 at 7:01 AM 

Democrats have a new theory for how they can win back Congress and the White House. Just like “soccer moms” helped put Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1996, and “NASCAR dads” helped George W. Bush win in 2004, Donald Trump, the theory goes, was elected because of “#NeverHillary” voters who didn’t particularly like him but despised her. Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the “20% of Trump’s voters [who] told exit pollsters they didn’t like him,” hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020.

One problem with that theory: The left’s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on President Trump are not peeling those voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president’s camp.

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s “F--- Trump” tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c---” on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to “absolutely harass” Trump officials. Then there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border to Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.

How do liberals think that 20 percent of reluctant Trump voters respond to these displays of unbridled contempt? They are outraged not at Trump but at his critics. The unhinged hatred for the president makes these voters almost reflexively defend him.

Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of tepid Trump voters who explained how the incessant attacks are causing them to rally around the president. “Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now,” the Times reports. “President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.” But Anders, who the Times says has “not a stitch of ‘Make America Great Again’ gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.” When she hears the “overblown” attacks on Trump, she says, “it makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more.” Another reluctant Trump voter, Tony Schrantz, agrees. “He’s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,” he tells the Times. “But when they’re hounding him all the time it just gets old.”

These are exactly the voters Democrats are hoping to win back. Instead, they are doing the opposite. Polls bear this out. Two weeks ago, Trump’s Gallup approval rating hit 45 percent — the highest it has been since his inauguration. (It slipped slightly to 41 percent last week). Trump’s approval among Republicans is at a near-record 87 percent, comparable to the levels of support for George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Think about that: The left’s attacks on Trump have had the same rallying effect for GOP voters as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, if appeals to civility, decency and conscience won’t work, then perhaps an appeal to base political pragmatism will. Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they lost because of #NeverHillary voters who will come home when she is not on the ballot. They lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America — working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families. These voters concluded in 2016 that Democrats no longer care about their problems and that Trump does.

Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters’ conclusions that Democrats still don’t get it — and don’t get them. The left’s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump. Indeed, it may very well get him reelected.

 

[Jarnhamar]

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s “F--- Trump” tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c---” on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to “absolutely harass” Trump officials. Then there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border to Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.

These people are becoming more unhinged and psychotic and continue to make Trump look like a better choice than whomever they will rally around.

Easy to see how they're pushing even more people into Trump's camp.

Every week it's a new old issue to be outraged about.

 

[Altair]

And as long as the faux outrage machine continues unabated, they stand a good chance of losing....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lefts-contempt-is-going-to-reelect-trump/2018/07/03/8e91b240-7ede-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.51a5b4daa4d8

It's ironic, because what was the right but a faux outrage machine during the Obama years?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5128171/Barack-Obama-criticised-for-bowing-to-King-Abdullah-of-Saudi-Arabia.html

The Washington Times called [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/07/barack-takes-a-bow/] the alleged bow a "shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate", which ran contrary to American tradition of not deferring to royalty.

"By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the US president belittled the power and independence of the United States," the paper said in an editorial. "Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-05-11/news/0905100191_1_dijon-mustard-horeb-mustard-museum-barry-levenson

Right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham weighed in: "What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard?" Sean Hannity of Fox News invoked the Grey Poupon commercial. "I hope you enjoyed that fancy burger, Mr. President," Hannity said.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/obama-put-his-feet-on-oval-office-desk-and-people-are-outraged/

President Obama put his foot on his desk in a White House photo, and although it admittedly does look a little cheesy, people are outraged over the leader of the free world placing his foot atop the Resolute Desk because it’s undignified and beneath the office of the president… although technically it’s in the office of the… the point is, people are not happy.

https://nypost.com/2011/09/13/o-gives-jobs-clip-service/

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s plan to reverse the nation’s staggering jobless rate is held together with a paper clip!

“Here it is,” Obama said, waving a copy of his jobs plan during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden yesterday, an enormous paper clip binding the pages together.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/president-obama-peter-king-tan-suit-rant

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) went on an extended rant about President Barack Obama’s decision to wear a tan suit during a statement about the terrorist group ISIS he delivered on Thursday at the White House.


“There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said on NewsMaxTV on Friday. The interview was flagged by Buzzfeed. “When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out —I’m not trying to be trivial here— in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he’s trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy.”

http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/26/obamas-fancy-new-mansion-is-located-1000-feet-from-the-islamic-center-of-washington-dc/

The mammoth, multi-million-dollar mansion where President Barack Obama and his family will reportedly live after the first family exits the White House is located 1,096 feet from the Islamic Center of Washington — one of the largest mosques in the Western Hemisphere.

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article1972955.html

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, writing in the Wall Street Journal with his daughter Liz, complained: “Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing.” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers gave a TV interview asking Obama to “please come back from the golf course” and find an Iraq solution.

Yet republicans won all three levels of government, interesting.

 

[Cloud Cover]

There is a third party already: the socialist left wing of the Democrat Party. One ran for POTUS last election. One just became a Congresswoman elect.

a friend of mine who works on K Street posted the attached image yesterday. The 3 bullet points at the bottom are interesting.

 

[Altair]

a friend of mine who works on K Street posted the attached image yesterday. The 3 bullet points at the bottom are interesting.

really?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/democrats-supreme-court-influenced-constitution/

The satirical Babylon Bee web site published an article, intended to be humorous, that posited a number of leading Democrats in the U.S. Senate calling for Supreme Court nominees to end their attachment to the U.S. Constitution. The article, bearing the headline “Senate Democrats Demand Supreme Court Nominee Not Be Unduly Influenced by U.S. Constitution,” began as follows:

Of course, Senators Schumer, Warren, and Booker did not make the statements attributed to them in the article, which was satirical in nature. Nonetheless, after the Babylon Bee article was published, someone worked its headline and the three (fake) quotations from Democratic Senators into meme form, along with additional critical commentary:

 

[Altair]

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill

Edit: Jonathan Swift wrote in The Examiner, Nov. 9, 1710: “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.” Not actually Churchill.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Awesome, thank you. He is a Dem so why he posted that is my next mission.
I will attempt to modify and delete the image-fake news on Facebook. Who would have thought?

Edit: and done!!

 

[Altair]

There are too many moving parts to do more than make barely educated guesses.  Might someone mount a primary challenge if Trump runs for a second term?  Will the Democratic candidate come from the establishment sub-faction, or the Bernie Sanders sub-faction?  About the only thing I'm sure of is that the USSC composition will be a greater factor than it already is.

Trump isn't winning a second term imho. His approval is as high as it is almost solely because he's sitting on top of (and blatantly taking credit for) a strong economy that he inherited. His tax cuts are quickly losing popularity and those who care about the angst of the liberals only makes about 30% of the country. The rest look around and see that things are good economically, so shrug their shoulders and assume that he must be doing a good job.

The economy is a slow moving beast and trends can change, but the trends are absolutely moving in the wrong direction

Exhibit A: The yield spread between 10 & 2 yr government bonds.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y

The yield spread does a pretty tremendous job of predicting US recessions. Basically when there is no difference between the bond yield of a 10 yr and 2 yr bond, the US economy slows down (sometimes in spectacular fashion). That seriously appears to be coming.

Exhibit B: Tightening of the money supply (rising interest rates)

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-.../interest-rate

The financial crisis in 08 put the weight of the world on Obama and the US Fed and both did a pretty decent job of playing their part to more or less rescue the economy. Obama had TARP, but the larger part of why the US turned around relatively quickly (and there wasn't a 30's style decade of economic depression) is that the Fed basically made borrowing money free. The US economy went through rounds of Quantitative Easing (aka, pouring buckets of money down the economy's throat) at ridiculously low interest rates. Well, QE stopped a couple of years ago, but the interest rates remained at a pretty historic low until recently when the fed has started to ratchet the rate back up into the 2% range (which is still historically low). This tightening of the money supply will lead to slightly slower growth but more importantly, it removes the biggest tool in the Fed's bag to combat a bad economy should a Trump recession be a harsh one. In normal circumstances, the Fed can make a pretty significant impact by cutting the interest rate, but they wont make a dent here.

Exhibit C: Trade Wars

This just really exacerbates everything else. One of the key reasons for these long term trade deals like Nafta is that it creates a relatively fair, but almost entirely stable long term set of rules that allows companies to invest money in future production with the confidence that they will see the fruits of their investment in the future. That spending of profits on expansion is the mortar of any economy. It generates short term, usually high paying construction jobs and then longer term employment, often in areas that need it (look at the expansion of automotive production in the US south for a good example of this). Fewer new jobs means less consumer spending, which means the service/retail sectors starts to suffer almost immediately. To make matters even worse, the prices of just about everything goes up because of tariffs and large chunks of their economy are basically landlocked so the already relatively small domestic consumer base they have the ability to sell to, is getting smaller and poorer by the day.

Exhibit D: Stock Market

The stock market is not the economy. Something in the range of 15% of all Americans even own a publicly traded equity, so it really and truly is only a measure of the wealth for the wealthy. It is however a pretty decent barometer for the sentiment of big/smart money within the economy. It is prone to over reacting in both directions to current economic sentiment but again, it does a good job of letting us know what big/smart money thinks is going to happen in the future. Well, the DOW is down 2000 points since January.


So yeah, unless if all of this nonsense turns around, Trump isn't winning anything. He's almost historically unpopular at this point in his presidency with an economy that is slowly turning against him. think people over estimating the support that got him into the white house. It took a historically unpopular democrat with ~30 yrs of public baggage and a poorly run campaign for Trump to sneak into office by about 85,000 votes almost perfectly placed. He's done nothing to endear himself to the masses since and his numbers show it. Disapproval is up 10% since he barely took office and approval is down 5%. That all occurred while he was riding a booming economy and taking credit for it at every turn.

 

[tomahawk6]

Obama's economy was crap.Plenty of work to be had since Trump took office.Tariffs with China may slow things down unless he reverses himself.
As for 2020,the only thing stopping Trump is Trump.The dem's may run Berni the socialist millionaire.I don't see a Republican that could run against Trump.

 

[Altair]

Obama's economy was crap.Plenty of work to be had since Trump took office.Tariffs with China may slow things down unless he reverses himself.
As for 2020,the only thing stopping Trump is Trump.The dem's may run Berni the socialist millionaire.I don't see a Republican that could run against Trump.

https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/trumps-economy-looks-just-like-obamas-except-for-one-important-thing/

So with the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration nearly here, it’s a good time to examine whether America really is experiencing the greatest economic revival in its history?


The answer, in a word, is no.

That’s because there was nothing to recover from. Jobs, stocks and GDP are rising under Trump, just as they did under Obama. In fact, by almost every measure, the performance of the economy under Trump is indistinguishable from Obama’s second term—save for one important metric that was disappointingly weak under Obama: business investment.

Uh huh.

 

[kkwd]

To figure out President Trump's chances of winning the 2020 election you would have to consider his opponent. Right now there isn't one so predictions of a loss are just wishful thinking.

 

[Altair]

To figure out President Trump's chances of winning the 2020 election you would have to consider his opponent. Right now there isn't one so predictions of a loss are just wishful thinking.

Very true.

However, if the economy turns on him, and it's beginning to look like it might, he's going to have a mighty hard time winning, regardless of opponent.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>It's ironic, because what was the right but a faux outrage machine during the Obama years?

All of the examples you linked are of faux outrage directed at Obama.  I'll stipulate in advance that faux outrage was directed at Harry Reid, at Nancy Pelosi, at various White House staff, etc.  But my recollection of who were the targets of outrage and the intensity of that outrage during those 8 years does not equate to the fanatical level of ill feeling and calls for action and harassment being directed at many public figures - and some not particularly public figures - showing a measure of Trump rah-rah.

Politics is cyclical.  The Democratic party is having its own Tea Party moment.  It won't be as orderly and generally productive as the Republicans' was (at least in its initial months).  They might shift the mix of sub-factions within the House, and might do so without significantly altering the party balance (ie. moderate Democrats replaced by less moderate Democrats in districts that never had a prayer of going Republican); I doubt they'll have much effect on the Democratic mix in the Senate.

 

[Journeyman]

The Democratic party is having its own Tea Party moment.  It won't be as orderly and generally productive as the Republicans....

Agree, whole-heartedly.  It's all part of the 'catering to the extremes' polarizing politics. 

And it's not remotely an exclusively American event.  :not-again:

 

[Infanteer]

Obama's economy was crap.Plenty of work to be had since Trump took office.Tariffs with China may slow things down unless he reverses himself.

This is an argument that I hear a lot, but I haven't figured out why this has been stated.  I tried doing a bit of research into this myself last year, and I collected some raw data on three key economic indices (no fake news numbers here - this is World Bank data).  I found historic data for total US market capitalization, for Dow Jones Industrial Average, and S&P 500 average.  I updated my work, which took numbers starting from just before Obama's Jan 2009 inauguration, the first of each year, the 2016 election day, and today's data.  I attached the excel doc I used to collate the numbers.

Key findings for me are:

1.  The "Trump Bump" was real.  All US markets made significant, real absolute gain from election day 2016 and beyond - undoubtedly enthusiasm for a perceived business/investor-friendly administration.  However, since the beginning of 2018, there has been no additional growth.

2.  Under the Obama Administration, US markets grew steadily each year except 2015.  In fact, total U.S. market capitalization grew greatest in both absolute terms ($5.37 Trillion) and as a percentage (29-30%) in 2014, with 2009 being very close.  Although the DJI and S&P had greater absolute growth in 2017, growth as a percentage for these key markets was just as great (DJI) or greater (S&P) in 2014.

3.  When viewed as a whole, the data shows that U.S. markets have made steady (save 2015) and consistent growth since coming out of the Recession of 2008.  Market growth saw bumper growth in both the Obama (2009, 2014) and Trump (2017) administrations.

This tells me that markets prospered under the Obama administration, that optimism was even higher with the election of the Trump administration, but that the last 6 months have seen a leveling off with all three indices that I tracked. 

So, can someone explain to my first-year macro-econ trained brain how "Obama's economy was crap?"

 

[Infanteer]

So yeah, unless if all of this nonsense turns around, Trump isn't winning anything. He's almost historically unpopular at this point in his presidency with an economy that is slowly turning against him. think people over estimating the support that got him into the white house. It took a historically unpopular democrat with ~30 yrs of public baggage and a poorly run campaign for Trump to sneak into office by about 85,000 votes almost perfectly placed. He's done nothing to endear himself to the masses since and his numbers show it. Disapproval is up 10% since he barely took office and approval is down 5%. That all occurred while he was riding a booming economy and taking credit for it at every turn.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/the-democratic-party-hits-a-fork-in-the-road/564464/

An interesting look at the decision the Democrats need to make after November.  Do they go with a "re-assurer" to try and bring Obama's coalition back and get some disaffected folks who voted Trump in 2016, or do they go with a "mobilizer" to try and bring all the less-consistent millennial groups out there?

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Obama's economy was crap.Plenty of work to be had since Trump took office.

Lots of work - but stagnant wages and no job security, as suggested by this analysis of a recent OECD report....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it-great-to-be-a-worker-in-the-u-s-not-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-developed-world/?utm_term=.e16fec56d32b

Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world.
By Andrew Van Dam
July 4

The U.S. labor market is hot. Unemployment is at 3.8 percent, a level it’s hit only once since the 1960s, and many industries report deep labor shortages. Old theories of what’s wrong with the labor market — such as a lack of people with necessary skills — are dying fast. Earnings are beginning to pick up, and the Federal Reserve envisions a steady regimen of rate hikes.

So why does a large subset of workers continue to feel left behind? We can find some clues in a new 296-page report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of advanced and advancing nations that has long been a top source for international economic data and research. Most of the figures are from 2016 or before, but they reflect underlying features of the economies analyzed that continue today.

In particular, the report shows the United States’s unemployed and at-risk workers are getting very little support from the government, and their employed peers are set back by a particularly weak collective-bargaining system.

Those factors have contributed to the United States having a higher level of income inequality and a larger share of low-income residents than almost any other advanced nation. Only Spain and Greece, whose economies have been ravaged by the euro-zone crisis, have more households earning less than half the nation’s median income — an indicator that unusually large numbers of people either are poor or close to being poor.


Joblessness may be low in the United States and employers may be hungry for new hires, but it’s also strikingly easy to lose a job here. An average of 1 in 5 employees lose or leave their jobs each year, and 23.3 percent of workers ages 15 to 64 had been in their job for a year or less in 2016 — higher than all but a handful of countries in the study.

If people are moving to better jobs, labor-market churn can be a healthy sign. But decade-old OECD research found an unusually large amount of job turnover in the United States is due to firing and layoffs, and Labor Department figures show the rate of layoffs and firings hasn’t changed significantly since the research was conducted.

The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that don't require any advance notice for individual firings. The U.S. ranks at the bottom for employee protection even when mass layoffs are taken into consideration as well, despite the 1988 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act's requirement that employers give notice 60 days before major plant closings or layoffs.


When you lose your job in the United States, it’s harder to find another. Fewer than half of displaced workers find a job within a year, the researchers found. That puts the United States near the bottom of the five countries for which the researchers provided recent data. Japan’s rate was similar to the U.S., but Finland, Australia and Denmark were well ahead. Furthermore, the report’s authors find that “two in three families with a displaced worker fall into poverty for some time.”

Even when Americans do find another job, their earnings don’t recover. After four years, displaced workers are still about 6 percent behind their peers in terms of annual earnings. In countries such as Finland and Denmark, workers more or less recover completely over that time period.

These gaps at the lower end of the labor market can be traced back to weak government programs and hamstrung union bargaining, the report says. The United States spends less of its economic wealth on active efforts to help people who either don’t have a job or who are at risk of becoming unemployed than almost any other country in the study.

The unemployed, in particular, receive relatively little assistance. U.S. unemployment benefits provide less support in the first year of unemployment than those in any other country in the study, and the maximum length of benefits in a typical U.S. state, 26 weeks, is shorter than in all but a handful of countries. In some states, the maximum benefit length is less than half of that.


Only 12 percent of U.S. workers were covered by collective bargaining in 2016 — among all the nations the OECD tracks, only Turkey, Lithuania and South Korea have been lower at any point this millennium. Based on an OECD review of almost four decades of data, countries that have decentralized collective-bargaining systems, like the United States, tend to have slower job growth and, in most cases, higher unemployment than other advanced nations.

These collective bargaining and government support systems might have something to do with another report finding as well: Workers’ share of national income dropped about eight percentage points between 1995 and 2013, faster than anywhere but Poland and South Korea over that time.

The report itself is avaailable here:

http://www.oecd.org/employment/oecd-employment-outlook-19991266.htm

 

[Brad Sallows]

>This tells me that markets prospered under the Obama administration, that optimism was even higher with the election of the Trump administration, but that the last 6 months have seen a leveling off with all three indices that I tracked. 

>So, can someone explain to my first-year macro-econ trained brain how "Obama's economy was crap?"

Historically the US economy has recovered after every recession and established new high watermarks for those kinds of measurements (indices, equity, capital, GDP, etc).  During the Obama administration, supporters were fond of pointing out how much improvement occurred - as measured from the depth of the recessionary trough, which was extraordinarily deep.  They also relentlessly focused on the U-3 unemployment number (what most people think of as the customary measure of unemployment) without taking into consideration people no longer actively looking (eg. U-4).  (A rule of thumb I picked up from reading what economists had to say: in any recession longer than 6 months, you need to start paying attention to the U-4 and not just the U-3 because people out of work longer than 6 months have more trouble getting re-hired if they do start looking.)  I was never impressed by Obama's cheerleaders claims, because I was always comparing measurements to where things were immediately pre-recession and taking into account that if you start from a very low point, any improvement looks good.  For example, the last 3 US federal deficit numbers prior to the recession ('05, '06, '07) were (nominal dollars) $318B, $248B, $161B.  How does the recovery and post-recovery fiscal picture look when that is part of the context?

Useful questions to ask are: has recovery reached the pre-recession numbers; how long did it take (at what rate did numbers improve); have the pre-recession trends (rates of change) re-established, or are the rates faster or slower?  Also, you could look at labour force participation numbers, federal government's fiscal picture including revenues, expenses, and the "trust fund" solvencies.

In my experience the "Obama economy was crap" criticism was most often founded on the unusually slow pace of recovery.  Labour force participation and federal government fiscal health were also often mentioned.