Okay This Is Basically An Olio Of Thought

So Chuck Schumer came out today and said that TARP and the stimulus saved 10 million jobs (thanks to Hot Air Pundit).

You've heard other similar "saved or created figures from the Administration.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of it.  Frankly, if my job was saved, I never knew it was in jeopardy, so I'm just not grateful.  

As to the "created" figure, I think the Administration could learn a less about the term "net."  If 400,000 lose their jobs, and 300,000 are created, you didn't create 300,000 jobs, you lost 100,000.  

Never mind that probably the only way you can quantify a saved job would be to poll employers, and ask how many people the employer was going to fire until the stimulus was passed (notoriously unreliable).  

But this is why Obama and the Democrats lost the midterm elections by huge numbers.  Tout your victories, don't lie about successes.  

The fact is unemployment is still at 9.6%.  The fact is underemployment is significantly higher.  The fact is that figure is skewed lower due to discouraged former employees no longer looking for work.  Now I'm no expert, but I think I'd shy away from labeling that a success to campaign on.  

So the Administration tried blaming Bush.  Fantastic.  That isn't tired.  You've been here nearly two years, it's your economy.  Is that fair? I don't care.  You spent a trillion dollars.  A drunk ring tailed lemur could have helped the economy better than Obama.  Ironically, $756,091 went towards the study of alcohol effects on ring tailed lemurs.  

You passed health care reform.  If there was one thing less surprising than that I don't know what it is.  You had majorities in both the House and Senate.  And Obama in power to sign it into law.  Why was it such a struggle?  Oh yeah, the public didn't want it.  So I guess you couldn't campaign on that either.

Let's see. What does that leave us?  The Easter Egg Roll - rampant success.  

Oh yeah. The Big Bad Iraq War.  Wait a second, that's out.  Obama voted against the Iraq War, the left lampooned the surge as a future failure.  

Okay I'm out of ideas. Hence, an overwhelming rebuke of the Democratic agenda.  You wanna know why?  The 2006 and 2008 elections were a referendum on Bush.  The "anyone but a Republican" strategy worked.  Well.  But the 2010 midterms were different.  The public got a taste of the Democratic agenda, and it tasted like Jimmy Carter (old, shriveled, stale Georgians are the worst).  The youth vote wasn't going to be duped again by the hip cool President, and the tax paying adults of the world had nostalgia, but the bad kind that smelled like 1977-1980.  

The cold hard truth is that we're a center right country, and the Democratic agenda doesn't work here.  While Europe moved towards socialism after the second World War, because they were terrified of a third (let's face it, their countries were destroyed all due to a few have nots that got pissed), the US has no fear base to drive them further left.  So yes, the midterms were a referendum on the Democrats, because we remembered what they do when they're in power.