The cite doesn’t say that 800K people “stopped looking” – it says “Our analysis of the household survey suggests the labor force decline was mostly due to fewer people entering the labor force than usual, rather than more people exiting the labor force.”
Just curious, how many people retire in a given month? I assume that’s lumped into those leaving the work force.
po-ta-to, po-tah-to. There are fewer Americans looking to work than there used to be. That’s bad no matter how you slice it.
You could even spin it as “the economy is so bad young people aren’t even starting to look for jobs”.
Little bit fuzzy on that word “many”. Perhaps you could render that into some sort of numerical value? Surely Fox News or Americans for Prosperity has some figures on that you can offer?
Surely I’d prefer to just use the election as a proxy for that, since unlike surveys and government figures, election results are definitive and have consequences.
Well, of course, given your spotless record of prescience and shrewd analysis, we can certainly understand.
Actually, I think you mean the election of 2010 was definitive and had consequences. 2008 and 2012, not so much.
Well there you have it, folks. The winner of the election will be whoever wins the election.
And that will be the Republicans, even if they don’t take the Senate. They will win a majority of the votes in 2014. Since Democrats here claim they actually won the House in 2012(without even winning a majority), I can make that claim too.
Bless your heart, of course you can, you make any claims you like! The entertainment value alone is worth the price of admission!
Before we take this any further, please pin down here how you would define a Republican defeat.
Is this why they vote for Republicans?
A defeat is where you lose seats. A win is where you gain seats.
So are aggregate vote-totals irrespective of seats also relevant, or not?
That is also relevant. As are the governors’ races. The GOP now controls a big majority of governors’ mansions and quite a few state legislatures too. Maintaining control of those states is crucial for continuing the fight against ACA.
Midterm elections tend to have a lot more going on than Presidential races due to the majority of governor elections being in the midterms. So there’s plenty of ways for either side to win. If the Republicans capture the Senate but lose several governors, I’d consider that a disappointment. I’d actually sooner see all the GOP governors survive than win the Senate, if I had to choose.
If Democrats hope that the President will somehow be able to drive turnout even though he’s not on the ballot, things are actually worse on that front than they were in 2010:
Democrats are significantly less motivated by their support for Obama, a factor that could complicate the critical effort to turn out voters. In 2010, 47% cast a vote to show their support for him; that’s dropped to 31%. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders say the party will tap the sort of sophisticated on-the-ground efforts that Obama pioneered to boost turnout.
Is anyone else thinking that John Madden should get a job as a pundit? Or is it just me?
Yup, that USA Today/Pew Research poll is far from a good poll. I’m not going to try to spin it as a positive, but suffice it to say that it shows just how badly the Dems need to bring their A-game to this election.
Interesting - and I am not disagreeing with you, but I have never really put much value in Governors. But that is perhaps the two states I am most familiar with, RI and MA, have such vast Dem majorities in their state assemblies that the Governor is often an afterthought no matter what party they are from.
BTW, here’s the elections calendar. The first primaries are tomorrow – Indiana, NC, and Ohio. The last will be September 13 (USVI).