Sometimes people are just wrong and they suffer as a result. This is effectively what happened with Obama early in his presidency in dealing with the economy and the stimulus bill. The stimulus bill was far too small and the public sales job on it was awful, but these are sub-problems that arose from the original sin of the Obama administration. President Obama and his economic advisers were very wrong about one important thing early on: they badly underestimated of the severity of the economic downturn. Most of their subsequent actions were based on this false premise, and as a result, their actions have been misguided and ineffective. They also have missed opportunities and even taken actions that were self-defeating. Being wrong about the downturn has done serious political damage to Obama and to the Democratic party.

That latest job numbers are bad news for the country, and, as a result, bad news for the incumbent political party, which will inevitably feel the brunt of voter anger over the economy. The country lost 131,000 jobs in July, and there is no indication the jobs market will improve in the three months leading [...]