Better Off? Are Republicans Kidding?

Are we better off than when we were plunging into a Great Recession? Doh! How hard is this Question for Democrats?

We were losing jobs, the banks were defaulting, the mortgage market collapsed, and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the balls to ask, “are you better off today?”

Personally, it would seem like the absolutely worst possible time to use that popular phrase, since the global economy fell off a cliff in 2007 and 2008 due to Republican deregulation and self-regulation.

But low and behold, the Democrats are stumped on this one. Really? NO, REALLY?

If this is a harbinger of things to come, we’re about to see the party that brought us this pain, and now supposed future painful sacrifices, back into power.

At least one guy got it right:

CNN: Brad Woodhouse, communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN's "Early Start" on Monday that Americans were "absolutely" better off than four years ago, portraying the president as a pilot who saved a crashing plane. "The truth is that the American people know, we were literally a plane, the trajectory was towards the ground. He got the stick and pulled us up out of that decline," Woodhouse said.

Woodhouse pretty much said what VP Joe Biden said in Michigan:

Woodhouse's answer was far more definitive than those of some top Obama advisers on Sunday talk shows who stumbled over the question of how Americans feel four years after Obama's election.

Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod told Fox News, "We're in a better position than we were four years ago," he didn't directly answer the question if voters thought they were better off. White House senior adviser David Plouffe had a similar answer on ABC, saying, "I think everyone understands we were this close to a Great Depression. 

Democrats have to start answering the question immediately, with the first few words out of their mouths. But the Democratic Party is horrible at messaging, and one of the better spokespeople lately was Gov. Martin O’Malley, must have been drunk when he shot the party in the foot with this:

Republicans pounced when Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's answered "no" to the question on CBS on Sunday.

I’m amazed.