On This Week with Jake Tapper, David Axelrod points out that we already know what Republican ideology does to the economy. I hope they start pounding home that message, because voters really need that reminder:
TAPPER: So the president's popularity among independents is sinking. It's a real problem for him politically. One year ago, he was at 56 percent approval with independents. Now it's 38 percent. Why do you think independents are turning away from the president?
AXELROD: Well, first of all, there are all kinds of numbers out there, so this is one set of numbers. There are other sets of numbers.
But, look, I think I've said this to you before. When I -- when I sat down with the president and his economic advisers, a group of us in the middle of 2008, and they told us what was about to ensure and -- about the recession that we were well into at that point, I said to him, you know, we're going to -- your numbers are going to suffer here, and we're going to have a difficult election, because these are going to be difficult times for the country.
Our job is not, though, to worry about that, Jake. Our job is to worry about how we get people back to work, how we move this country forward, and if -- if we do our job, the rest will take care of itself.
And, remember, elections -- the presidential election is an eternity away. Elections are about choices, though. They're not referendums. And on the other side of the ballot in November will be a party that has an economic theory, and it was tested, and it led to catastrophe.
We lost 3 million jobs in the last six months of 2008. The financial market almost collapsed. They turned a $237 billion surplus that Bill Clinton left into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And they're running on the same policies.
