I've Got To Admit It's Getting Better

Hey, midterm electorate! Check this out.

Job growth in July and August also was revised up by a combined 69,000. That included lifting August's disappointing initial estimate of 142,000 to 180,000. The revisions mean the economy added an average of 224,000 net new jobs from July through September. The unemployment rate fell to 5.9% in September, from 6.1% the previous month. It's the lowest level since July 2008.

What do I love most about this story? The fact that "economists," which is what we have in our modern society since we no longer predict the future by cutting up goats on a rock and reading their entrails, attribute at least part of the August downturn to the successful strike in the long battle over the Market Basket empire up here in the Commonwealth (God save it!)


Little people can make a difference. Arthur T. rulez!

The recovery, such as it is, remains an odd bird. People are still dropping out of their search for jobs. Young people are stuck in a virtual depression. There is a distinct feeling in the wind that another bubble is building somewhere and that, when it pops, we might be right back where we were in, say, July of 2008. Still, as the presidentwas right to point outat Northwestern yesterday, there are enough metrics to encourage a certain level of wary optimism.

But Mr. Obama's focus on Thursday was on the economy, recounting, as he often has, the country's comeback from the Great Recession. "What I want people to know is that there are some really good things happening in America," he said, ticking off progress in energy self-sufficiency, manufacturing numbers, health care costs and other areas. He portrayed Republicans as consumed with tax cuts for the wealthy rather than the middle-class, reflecting the two parties' "starkly different visions for this country.

It may not be enough, given the witches brew of engineered panic -- Ebola! ISIL! Immigrants! Immigrant ISIL's with Ebola! -- that likely will be the Republican pitch for the stretch drive of the campaign. There seems to be a kind of willful amnesia regarding the true state of the country that C-Plus Augustus handed off to this president six years ago. (Yesterday, appearing with Fox News head-of-meat Brian Kilmeade, C-Plus openly wondered why this president forced him to sign that status-of-forces agreement with Iraq. Yeah, he's still pretty much hopeless.) The economy really was teetering on the edge of the abyss. This administration's policies pulled it back. Some of those policies were paler and more wan than they needed to be. Some of those policies were far more tender than they needed to be towards the people who caused all the wreckage. But they did what they were supposed to do and, by and large, they were better for the country than they have been said to have been by both the president's supporters and by the opposition. There was no depression. That's a pretty low bar, but it's not nothing, either.

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