No, no, no, no, no

Bill James once noted that the reason for doing research is to avoid paying the price for believing things that aren’t true. The apparently sincere belief of Obama and his political advisers that sending “messages” to the kind of voters Mark Penn makes up cute names to describe is more politically important that the actual state of the economy is a case in point. It’s simply not true, and this belief is not only bad for the country but bad for Obama’s re-election prospects. And this would be the case even if concrete spending cuts were actually popular, which they aren’t.