Obama's been a great president. If he had been Republican, you guys would love him more than Reagan. Because Obama's accomplishments would be real.
This is exactly right.
If Trump or any Republican had this kind of sustained job growth, it would be a major talking point.
To hear Trump's dystopia vision of America, you'd think it was 2008 with 50 thousand jobs lost a month and 30% of homes in foreclosure. You'd think that merely going outside would lead to violent death.
The reality is that the Republican Machine has to lie about Obama, and they have to cover up the special interests they serve. They have to distract you with horror stories so you don't notice how they serve mega-mergers, anti-competitive monopolization and insanely inflated, no-bid weapons contracts.
For instance, the Republicans support the current plan for Anthem and Cigna to merge. This new mega-company could raise rates and decrease services without fear of losing consumers to a cheaper alternative, which wouldn't exist if the industry was allowed to consolidate. This is the trend we saw in the 80s when companies would buy each other so they didn't have to compete or innovate or lower their prices to gain and retain consumers.
The Right has their voters hermetically sealed in an information bubble where they are conditioned not to trust ANYTHING outside the bubble, including science.
The upshot is that Reagan could (and did) triple Carter's debt, but the republican voter never knew. Or, Obama could add more private sector jobs than Reagan and cut more federal jobs than Reagan, but the republican voter would never know. Or what about the fact that Bush 43 and the Republican Congress raised the debt ceiling 4 times? The republican voter didn't even know this happened. Bush's job growth was abysmal compared to Clinton and Reagan, but the republican voter doesn't have access to basic facts.
This is why we are in so much trouble.
Half the country thinks Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11. They've created their own fake world.