455,000 new jobless

Another resounding victory in Bush's War on the Economy!

In the Labor Department's report Thursday, the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which irons out the ups and downs of the volatile weekly data, rose to 439,250 -- the highest level since 449,000 in the week ended April 20, 2002 -- from a revised 426,000 the prior week.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, rose to 3.59 million in the week ended April 12, the latest data available, from a revised 3.55 million the prior week.

Old CW: the economy would rebound after the war. New CW: oh shit.

Which is why GOP pollster Matthew Dowd is sending out memos warning Republicans to prepare for plunging poll numbers.

Republicans know their history. They know what happened to father Bush. And they know that Bush's current numbers are artificially inflated, completely out-of-whack with reality (as Dowd puts it, "more realistic levels").

Those plunging poll numbers, in and of themselves don't pose a serious threat to Bush -- only a competent Democratic campaign will do that. But it does mean that as bleak as things look for us today (and as good as it looks for the GOP), at the end of the day our nation is still split 50/50, and no Iraq, or Afghanistan, or anything else can change that.

It's going to be a dogfight, and it's anyone's game to win.

Posted April 24, 2003 12:59 PM | Comments (96)