Obama Has Done Enough

Really. Enough. Like, say, helping wreck the economy.

After an awful week in the stock market, Team Obama sent its acolytes out to the Sunday morning shows to let everyone know that the president-elect’s campaign promise to impose tax increases on higher-income earners as quickly as possible probably won’t kick in until at least 2011.

By doing so, Obama and his inner circle finally, if only tacitly, acknowledged what they had refused to recognize during the presidential campaign, namely that economic expectations matter in the here and now.

This opens the door to the incoming administration’s next required admission — that their candidate, their party, and the expectations they created during the presidential campaign have been mostly responsible for the steep dive in the equity markets, and, nearly six months ago, put the economy into what will probably officially be declared a recession after this year’s fourth quarter. Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid did this in the areas of energy, taxation, and, with heavy assistance from Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, bailouts. With the exception of forcing, with the help of public opinion, a temporary lifting of the Outer Continental Shelf offshore drilling ban, there is little George Bush or the Republican minorities in Congress have been able to do to stop them, or to manage expectations.

And this:

Collectively, these factors have weighed down the economy for nearly half a year. In recognition of when they began doing what they have done, Team Obama and the POR economy’s performance must therefore be benchmarked against where things stood on June 1, 2008, as follows:

* Inflation (June 2007 through May 2008) — 4.2%.
* Unemployment — 5.5% (as of the May report; currently 6.5%).
* Prime rate — 5.0%.
* DJIA — 12638 (down 36% as of the November 21 close).
* S&P 500 — 1400 (down 43% as of that same close).
* NASDAQ — 2523 (down 49%).
* Quarterly GDP growth before the June-related adjustment — 3.3%.

Not good, my friends. Electing Obama was the absolute worst thing we could have done for America. Quote me on this in a few years.