If you haven't heard of the KSI (keep saying it) principle, it works like this: No matter how absurd the thing is that you want people to believe, just keep saying it, and eventually enough of them will. Barack Obama may not be a master of this technique, but he certainly is committed to it.
Consider his insistence yet again to a Labor Day union crowd in Milwaukee, who were breathlessly informed by the president that "by almost every measure, folks are better off" than when he talk office. (And of course he drifted into that g-dropping tone he uses when he's trying to sound like one of the regular folks.)
We have heard Obama make this claim many times before. Yet the facts tell an entirely different story. Here are just a few of them:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 11.4 million workers 16 or over have left the workforce since Obama took office. That's nearly one-tenth of the entire workforce! If official unemployment statistics counted these people as unemployed, which they don't for some insane reason, we would certainly not be looking at unemployment creeping downward toward 6 percent.
The Washington Times reports that economic growth under Obama is the worst since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in case you don't know your history, that was the Great Depression. Annualized growth under Obama is still struggling to get up to 2.0 percent, and friends, that is horrendous. In fact, Obama's average rate of GDP growth is a full percentage point lower than any other modern president. Now it is true that he took office during a steep recession, but if you look at the history of post-recession periods, you will find that they are characterized by sharp recoveries. Not so in Obama's case, where we've seen sluggish growth plod along for five years since the recession officially ended.
When it comes to ObamaCare, maybe Obama measures it by assuming the passage of ObamaCare makes us better off, and that's that. The American people disagree. A majority continues to oppose ObamaCare and has since it was passed four years ago. Americans who have lost their health insurance, seen their premiums soar or seen their network of providers narrowed might also explain to the president why they are certainly not better off since we passed it to find out what was in it.
But if Obama doesn't want to listen to me - and I'm sure he doesn't - maybe he would listen to the guy who told a union audience in Detroit the following on Monday:
"One of the reasons we’re not growing is that ordinary people have no money in their pockets from poor wages."
Who said that? Joe Biden! Did he get the memo that "by almost every measure folks are better off"?
Oh well. Since when do facts matter to these people. Keep saying it! And enough people will believe it. The president might want to start making sure his vice presidents is getting the talking points, though.
