Tom Toles is worth a thousand words

False premise. Considering what Dems are doing, nobody on the right seriously believes recovery is going to occur.

It's only a race in the minds of those who think recovery is possible in this chaos.

It's not. November is secure. Sadly.

There ought to be multiple roadblocks in front of Recovery.

"Unemployment"
"State and Local Government"
"HCR" (this roadblock can be sort of pushed off to the side unless it passes)
"Toxic Assets"

To name a few.

Actually the recovery already happened....you liberals need to start praying that the "double-dip" recession holds off until after November.....

Toles could have run the same cartoon two years ago and simply changed the elephant's flag to read "Surge" and the donkey's flag to read "Insurgency".

How soon we forget. Just like Ezra with his never ending rants against the Senate filibuster. I'm sure he was fine with that procedure when the dems were holding up the nomination of Miguel Estrada. That was justified, right?

No, the premise is fine. The recovery is happening already. It's just a matter of how quickly the average person will feel its impact.
Hockey might be a better metaphore. The clock could be a calander, the puck could be recovery, and the net could be the public. One team would have to be the Democrats, but with the other, you could go one of two ways: If you want to be partisan, the other team could be the GOP. If you dont, the other team could be the roadblocks that Bgmma50 mentions. either way its probably a better analogy.

This needs to happen for Dems to win in November:

- Bin Laden captured or Taliban surrender.

- Monthly job stats go positive before November and stay that way.

- Meaningful health care law signed into law.

Even a powerful recovery is likely to be insufficient.

Assuming very strong output and employment growth occurs, the unemployment number on election day is still likely to be no lower than 8-8.5%. On an absolute level, that's still very high. Worse, voter perception often lags reality.

Under Bush I, job creation was steady if still a bit slow after February 1992, and unemployment had fallen from 7.8% in the summer to 7.3% in October '92. Then again, the recession began under his watch, but I think voters aren't particularly thrilled to see an extremely awful economy become 'just' awful - Americans are an instant gratification bunch.

If the economy does start creating 200k+ jobs a month soon, the Democrats will be able to add that to their 'V' shaped employment chart and if they consistently push it maybe voters will care more about the derivative than the level than they have in the past.

Unfortunately recoveries after asset bubbles are very elusive things. I worry that the same cartoon will be applicable for the next few cycles.

superman32, you know, it's easy to say, "I'm sure that X" where X is something you think is wrong/terrible/stupid/a sign of hipocrisy, but it's pretty meaningless if you don't back it up. I don't know when exactly Ezra started arguing that the filibuster should be eliminated, but I know it's been a long time. If you're going to allege hipocrisy then you need to do some searching through his archives to actually find some.

And arguing that Dems wanted the insurgency to succeed goes beyond the realm of the offensive into the realm of the straight up stupid. It's "They want the terrorists to win!" all over again and it makes you sound like a damn fool. Liberals didn't want the Surge to fail, they just didn't think it would succeed. Furthermore, though the additional troops did end up helping more than I thought they would, the real breakthrough came from the change in tactics (paying off groups, engaging the locals more directly) which is not what the debate was when the Surge was proposed. But no matter how an argument on the finer points of the Surge comes out, no political party or broad swath of Americans wanted the insurgency to win.

Elijah24:
"The recovery is happening already."

I think I smell burning crack.

It's risk and reward. Risk is already inevitable, and highly privatized (unless you're Fannie or Freddie). But with the current government, no reward is guaranteed to remain yours.

We might reach some sort of equilibrium, but don't expect growth until investors have a feel for how much of their earnings they'll be permitted to keep.

Cpurick, that crack could explain why you don't believe the statistics that prove the begining of the recovery. There are programs that would help you quit. You should find one. Always remember: Crack is whack!

elijah, I believe we can reach equilibrium. And I believe that equilibrium will look like something that's bottoming out.

But what you want is growth -- actual expansion. That requires investment. Obama is setting up a commission to take the blame for raising taxes for him. Then there is cap and trade, and healthcare, all of which might have to be paid for, under tax structures that have not been finalized. With those unknowns, we should not be surprised that investment is stagnant.

It won't grow till an investor can tell how much a dollar must make before he can be assured of keeping a profit for himself. The current administration doubts he should be permitted to keep very much of the earnings -- something I'm sure you agree with. And as a result, little gets invested. Nobody takes risks when reward is so uncertain.

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Risk is already inevitable, and highly privatized (unless you're Fannie or Freddie).
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It was just last year that we went through the government taking on a bunch of risk from the private sector. And they are keeping the reward. So I'm not following you on this.

What is Obama's administration doing to take away reward from the private sector? I'm not seeing it.

Not sure I'm understanding cpurick. Investment is lagging not because of fears about recovering aggregate demand, or banks hedging against risk by keeping excess reserves at the fed, but because investors aren't sure if their profits in 10 years will be taxed at 25% or 28%?

"What is Obama's administration doing to take away reward from the private sector? I'm not seeing it."

I see. So you know exactly how much a multi-millionaire will net after taxes, say two years from now, on each dollar of revenue earned on a large, risky business investment made today?

And you know exactly how much tax a business will pay, two years from now, on earnings realized from a risky investment today, ultimately determining how much is left for a dividend?

Look at Obama's agenda. As long as those items may become law, such calculations are impossible, and many risks are not worth taking.

cpurick,

What you're saying is that for as long as Congress has existed, risks aren't worth taking because no one knows with precision what the law will look like in 2 years. I think you should give the business community, and markets in general, more credit.

You cite carbon control as an issue, so lets start there. The potential risk of Congress acting to disincentivize coal use has been around for years, through the Clean Air Act, SO2 trading, and now C02 trading/taxation. Throughout that time, guess what? Investments were still made. Markets assessed the situation to price in the risks, boosting clean technologies, and what you're seeing is ramped up investment in wind energy, among other fields. Our economy is not helpless before government. There are no directives from D.C. that dictate exactly what to do. Markets are generally intelligent and can handle legislative risk. No business can ever know exactly what it'll be making 1 year from now, let alone two for all sorts of reasons, with legislative action usually being only a slight concern, and yet the economy still functions.

"What you're saying is that for as long as Congress has existed, risks aren't worth taking because no one knows with precision what the law will look like in 2 years."

No, I'm saying that when there's a government that *intends* to change many things, then by definition there is no precise knowledge of what things will look like in 2 years, is there?

Is it not clear to you that this administration intends to change more things than most? Is this really that hard to grasp?

"So you know exactly how much a multi-millionaire will net after taxes, say two years from now, on each dollar of revenue earned on a large, risky business investment made today?

And you know exactly how much tax a business will pay, two years from now, on earnings realized from a risky investment today, ultimately determining how much is left for a dividend?"

cpurick, sorry for the late response -- hope you get to see this.

I cannot understand the suggestion here. Are you saying that someone would not want to make money because the government will tax it? Because that seems unlikely to me.

Even if the government taxes it, you still end up with more than you would have if you had done nothing.

@Lomillialor: "This needs to happen for Dems to win in November:"

Only one of the things you mentioned is relevant, in my opinion: "Monthly job stats go positive before November and stay that way."

And it's needs to be the real deal. People need to be getting new jobs, getting hired, seeing their friends and neighbors getting news jobs, reading them talk about their new jobs on Facebook.

"Meaningful health care law signed into law."

That would help but that, and catching Bin Ladin, would be distant seconds to a robust economy. When Republicans were attacking Clinton like rabid dogs, they came off like rabid dogs, and in no small part because the economy was strong. And Republicans lost seats in 1996 and 1998.

And if the economy was strong now, that's how their attacks on Obama would play. It's the crappy economy, people. 10% unemployment spells doom for Dems in November.