if you listen to Thom Hartmann or some shows on MSNBC. We forget that most people don't.

Simple and directed to the average American voter. (3rd grade level IQ)

Ugh....sometimes I don't know. I work and live surrounded by intelligent, educated, creative, caring people and then I talk to my tea party/ron paul loving east coast relatives or read the comments section attached to any article and am filled with despair.

People aren't really that dim are they?

pretty much sums it all up.


edited to add:

Lets make an ad or something! I've got two months off coming up

I believe such messaging has already been generally shelved because eventually someone will wonder why we aren't acting like it from a policy proposal standpoint and why have we taken a broadly cyclical attitude about the crisis after the initial hit.

Of course the sentiment has been used as a segway type line but never has been a focus and there are reasons for that beyond naively not thinking of it.

Good job by Matthews and thanks for bringing the highlights here for us who don't watch teh tee vee.

economy with a trillion dollar surplus. The RW media condition people for shorter attention spans and do not encourage people to recognize patterns in history.

Everyone has heard that a million times.

unaware of 2008 - 2010, shall we?

Beats the pants of actually putting forward a comprehensive plan any day....because fluff is more important then substance?

President Obama needs to find a plan, then support it actively, that will guarantee 2012.

Attempting to peddle a pedantic message is likely to lead to our failure in the polls this November.

Ah, I see your edit expanded it.

What about 2008-2010? That part still eludes me.

with the teaheads at my job. They argue that the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in the 06 election well before the 08 downturn. They say Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were more interested in pushing a full withdraw from Iraq instead of dealing with the coming financial crisis. They contend that Nancy and Harry let it happen on purpose to get leverage against Bush and Republicans in the 08 election. They argue that it is true Obama inherited a housing crisis but they contend it was mostly because of loose fiscal policy of the banks making loans to those that could not afford to pay, which they squarely blame on liberal policies of govt mortgage companies Fannie and Freddie... Many completely agree that Bush exacerbated the situation by bailing out the banks but they equally assign that blame to both parties in Congress that funded TARP.

Than they lay into Obama, they say he had the first 2 years with full control of both houses in Congress and was more interested in passing healthcare reform than worrying about jobs and the economy, they say his stimulus failed even though it may have stemmed the tide of job losses it never corrected the economy, they blast 5 trillion in additional debt in his first three years in office and then complain exactly what did we get for the money? I have even had them say if he would have just gave the money to the jobless he could have had zero percent unemployment by hiring hole diggers and hole fillers....

Anyway it is the Faux news, talk radio crowd and they are becoming extremely vocal many people have been hypnotized into this thinking, the simple answer is that there are not enough people doing better now than they were doing before Obama got elected, bad economic news makes it harder to get the message out....

Just today I tried to defend Obama's fiscal record by saying that if he had not taken the steps that he had there would have been a complete depression their response is you sound like when Bush was saying if he didn't go to war in Iraq they would have come here and killed us and they told me I couldn't have it both ways...

maybe this is insanity after all....

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2011/05/17/why-declining-homeownership-rates-might-not-be-a-bad-thing

Homeownership peaked at 69.2 percent in late 2004.

Funny, too, how suddenly 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 -- when the GOP led the way to multiple tax cuts, multiple wars, a new prescription drug benefit, all without means to pay for the new spending -- suddenly don't matter in the economic scheme of things but somehow January 2007 changed the economy. Here in the States we're encouraged to focus on quick fixes -- Lose 30 pounds by Memorial Day! -- and ignore long-term patterns.

Find me a recent GOP president who didn't leave a deficit behind, in fact, and look up what economists have said about the GOP presidential candidates' prospects of fixing the deficit (Short answer: Slim to none.).

..that this argument does little to nothing in resolving the problems we face. It is solely a "political" response to the bullshit we are now hearing from the Republicans. This is the argument they would be selling to the people if a Democrat had been in office in 2008 when the shit hit the fan. It is purely and simply a dose of their own medicine. It intrudes into the thought processes of our uneducated populace in a manipulative manner, just like the Repubs would do. The only difference being that it is true.

Another thing I would like to hear repeated: Obama has tried to get a Jobs/Infrastructure bill (real red meat stimulus) passed, yet all the Repubs do is OBSTRUCT OBSTRUCT OBSTRUCT. We need ads that connect those dots for people. The Repubs will do anything to sink Obama even if they have to tank the economy in the process. Lots of great video of idiots jabbering about how destroying Obama is priority #1.... What f___g arseholes! All the g__ damned self righteous SOB's are nothing but a bunch of traitors!

Ok, I'm going to bed.

This Congress is so sorry that they make Truman's "Do-Nothing" Congress look like workaholics..