Read it and WEEP, Righties! From the low on December 22nd this is a recovery of eighty-one percent! Give or take. Hey, what is a rounding error among friends? Or enemies? Of course there are some complications. Rasmussen generally is pollster non-grata around Team O. If Gallup is merely a kindergarten class with broadband Rasmussen is a vandal invasion masquerading as a public-opinion outfit. Of course that was when the Rasmussen numbers held bad news for the President. Their Presidential Approval Index has been a focal point for the Right since the Bush years since it makes the vital distinction between regular old Approvers/Disapprovers and those who declare Strong adherence to their opinions. The Bushies drew solace in the depths of their Disapproval, for those who needed it, from the relative adamance of their support. Likewise while general Approval has been right around or above the halfway mark for Obama since the summer as he suffers setback after setback, the Strong numbers have been much weaker. Until now.

So, what has happened? Most interestingly, the general numbers have not moved. Not an inch. Approve/Dis are still almost exactly at 50/50. The Strong Disapprovers also show no motion. As before they are a solid majority of Disapprovers, about 3/4s.

Nearly ALL the movement has been within the Approvers. Of the half that Approves, just about half have Strongly Approved as recently as last week. Now there has been a ten-point jump. This is a rarity to say the least. It cannot be dismissed as statistical noise; a burp, a bump. Nope, something has genuinely occured here. Rasmussen has two great claims to fame. Most importantly they have the best track record on predicting electoral results. They had the closest numbers for Kerry v Bush and Obama v McCain and their work on Scott Brown v Coakley recently took all other pollsters going away. But also they lead other polling concerns. They were the first to see Brown breaking away in Massachusetts and had early dispositive numbers for Obama in the election so if the trend holds we will see other outfits more acceptable to Robert Gibbs making the same discovery. Obama approval has not increased. But it has firmed up. A lot.

There is really only one news event that plausibly explains this and that is the sudden end to the Great Recession. Yes, the Recession is over, didn’t you hear? Who remembers when Senator Phil Gramm corrected the misapprehension that we were in a recession oh, September ’08 or so? He said we were, at that time, suffering a “mental recession” since we had not at that point experienced two consecutive quarters of GDP shrinkage. And of course he was right. At that time. The second shrinky quarter did materialize with a vengeance around the debut of TARP and bailout mania though so we officially were in a recession half a year in duration by then. Well, now we have had two consecutive quarters of GDP growth. It was pretty modest growth in the 3rd quarter of last year but, as all the papers have so enthusiastically declared, the 4th quarter grew at 5.6% or so. That is the highest rate since ’06 which was a dern good year as you may recall.

So there can scarcely be any surprise that President Obama should reap a serious benefit from that. It seems unlikely that the State of the Union or his other recent media triumphs could explain it as they have not been all that triumphant. But the needle has not moved in the general numbers. The undeniable fact is that about half of those who have supported Obama have gone from Strongly doing so, to tepidly doing so and now are back with Strong support. I suggest that the suddenness and sweep of this movement can only be because they are rejoicing that the Great Recession is history. It is another political scalp on Obama’s belt. Surely a return to the prosperity of the Bush and Clinton years is just around the corner. These things are cyclical, right? It only gets so bad before it starts getting better, right?

Right!

All things being equal.

But all things are NOT equal. If you believe that our recent prosperity is the natural order of things, rather than a benevolent abberation delivered by a specific governing philosophy (generally known as Reaganite) then yes, you might look forward to 4% growth and 5% unemployment around the corner even with the costly gub expansion Obama promises and is delivering. If you think that Bush, that basterd!, was standing on the neck of the People for eight years; that absent his buffoonery we might have had I suppose 8% growth and 1% unemployment then you just might, after gloom drove you from Strong Support of the President to mere Support come raging back into the Strongly column on the appearance of that happy, happy news that the Great Recession, spawn of Bush and the vile Republicans, is dead.

As long as it IS dead and as long as it STAYS dead. The muted reception the Administration gave these numbers tells you that they are not so easily cheered as their supporters.

And if the Great Recession is only PARTLY dead… or just stumbled in her rampages, where will the Stronglies of today go then?

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