<\/a>Bernie Sanders is calling for a political revolution. Is there evidence to demonstrate that his “revolution” is needed? And why is the Sanders revolution proving to be more attractive to some voters than Hillary Clinton’s focus on “improving what he have?”<\/p>\n There is considerable evidence in the FY 2017 budget<\/a> that President Obama just submitted to Congress that the American economy is doing well. Republicans seem to collectively have astigmatisms in both eyes considering how blurred their vision of reality is.<\/p>\n Consider how job growth has changed from 2009 (President Obama\u2019s first year, still in the hangover from the Bush years) through 2015:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Related to that is how unemployment has fallen during the Obama Administration:<\/p>\n <\/a>Republicans are always harping on the federal deficit, but the rate of growth has consistently fallen through the Obama Administration (as it did during the Bill Clinton years):<\/p>\n <\/a>To be fair, and to raise a question that Democrats tend to avoid: \u201chas the \u2018do-nothing\u2019 nature of the Republican-controlled recent Congresses had anything to do with the sustained growth?\u201d It\u2019s interesting because if it is true, there do not seem to be any Republicans who claim any credit for their role in the growth. This stands in stark contrast to the growth during the Bill Clinton years. If you listen to John Kasich and Newt Gingrich, you would think that their roles as Republicans in Congress were the determining factors in the growth.<\/p>\n The charts above depict certain aspects of the macro-economy. That means how we are doing collectively<\/span> (I guess that we can now thankfully use that word, courtesy of Bernie). What the charts do not show is the micro-economy \u2013 how individuals, families, and small businesses are presently doing.<\/p>\n One way to get a sense of how the economy is working at the grass roots level is to test the mood, or the forecasts of individuals. Using data from the recent December, 2015 CNN\/ORC poll<\/a>, it is clear that the American people are of mixed minds when it comes to how the economy is working for them.<\/p>\n How do you rate the economic conditions in the country today \u2013 as very good, somewhat good, somewhat poor or very poor?<\/p>\n <\/a>What leads to further questions is how the lack of optimism crosses economic and educational levels:<\/p>\n <\/a>What is interesting here is how the percentages for every single sub-group, with the one exception of college grads who rate economic conditions as \u201csomewhat good,\u201d is within the margin of error, compared to the total column. This indicates that despite the rosy macro numbers, there is no mandate for optimism from citizens. While this pattern has been true for most of the 2000s, it has not always been that way. Take a look at the figures from July of 1998, when Bill Clinton was president:<\/p>\n <\/a>Take a look at the \u201cTotal good\u201d and \u201cTotal poor\u201d columns. They seem inconceivable today. Interestingly enough, the \u201cTotal good\u201d figure nearly two years later, in June, 2000, was 85%. It makes it hard to believe that Al Gore won the popular election that year by only a half-million votes.<\/p>\n Two of the bellwether questions about how the economy is doing are:<\/p>\n Occasional Planet asked those questions in a recent survey* and here are the results:<\/p>\n\n