Right-wing gets clever with charts to falsely cast Dems as job killers
Published
Right-wing blogs have recently been pushing a chart based on cherry-picked data that conveniently shows a correlation between rising unemployment and the Democratic takeover of Congress after the 2006 elections. The right-wing media's latest fun with charts serves two purposes here -- to trash Democrats as job killers and blame them for the recession that sparked the rise in unemployment. Take a look:
Sure looks bad for Democrats, right? But since this is a chart hyped by right-wing media, you can safely bet it's based on misleading, cherry-picked data aimed squarely at making Democrats look bad. And sure enough, it is.
First, contrary to the chart's suggestion that the Democratic takeover of Congress is somehow to blame for the recession -- which led to the spike in unemployment -- PolitiFact has rated that claim “Pants on Fire” false, noting, “We believe it is the height of partisan wishful thinking to imply that one party's accession to power in Congress is to blame for a major recession.” PolitiFact also reported that "[m]ost of the economists we spoke to agreed that the recession was caused most directly by long-term trends, especially a bust in housing prices and high energy prices, rather than by political factors."
Also, we can play the chart game, too. If you look at other available jobs data, you can draw a completely different conclusion: that job growth has indeed been stronger under Democratic leadership than Republican leadership. PolitiFact recently examined job creation under Democratic presidents versus Republican presidents since World War II and concluded: “Democratic presidents have been more successful at creating jobs.” Here's PolitiFact's rundown of “the average annual percentage increases in jobs for each postwar president”:
Harry S. Truman (Democrat): increase of 2.95 percent a year
Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican): increase of 0.50 percent a year
John F. Kennedy (Democrat): increase of 2.03 percent a year
Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat): increase of 3.88 percent a year
Richard M. Nixon (Republican): increase of 2.16 percent a year
Gerald R. Ford (Republican): increase of 0.86 percent a year
Jimmy Carter (Democrat): increase of 3.45 percent a year
Ronald Reagan (Republican): increase of 2.46 percent a year
George H.W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.40 percent a year
Bill Clinton (Democrat): increase of 2.86 percent a year
George W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.01 percent a year
Barack Obama (Democrat): decrease of 3.0 percent a year
PolitiFact further noted:
If you exclude Obama, Democrats averaged 3.03 percent annual job growth, compared to 1.07 percent for Republicans -- a nearly 3-to-1 advantage.
If you include Obama, the Democrats still held a significant edge. With Obama included, the Democrats averaged 2.03 annual job growth, compared to the same 1.07 for Republicans -- about twice as high as the GOP.
Certainly paints a different picture than the misleading right-wing chart, doesn't it?
So this chart falls short of reality on two fronts. But all of this shouldn't come as much of a surprise, though. As Media Matters has previously shown, this isn't the first time right-wing media have gotten clever with charts to falsely attack Democrats over employment figures.