From an email alert I got from POLITICO today:
The U.S. added 243,000 jobs in January - far exceeding expectations of about 150,000 jobs - and the unemployment rate dipped to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent in December, the Labor Department announced Friday.
This very good news comes on the heels of news that the U.S. GDP grew faster than it had in well over a year. Again, it's worth asking (as I did the other day with the GDP news):
...what the political impact would be if the economy sort of modestly continued to improve over the next few months leading up to the election.
We have a little over nine months until Election Day, which is plenty of time for all sorts of calamitous things to happen with respect to the national and even global economy. We should easily and readily acknowledge that our current national situation with respect to jobs remains dire, at best. Job growth needed to keep up with our working-age population is just not enough. Not even close, and so there are real Americans out there still feeling real pain.
But even knowing that, you have to also acknowledge that messages matter, that good news matters. If there continues to be a steady drumbeat of (albeit modest) good news on the economic front between now and November, that will be catastrophic for the GOP message of "Obama has wrecked the country". If people are told enough times that things are getting better, if things do continue to get better, even modestly, then I would venture to say voters would be more likely to continue those policies rather than changes horses in mid-stream.
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