JOHN MERLINE: Just How Lousy Is The Economic Recovery? “Indeed, when you compare the current recovery to the recoveries from the two previous worst post-Depression recessions — the one in 1974-75 and the one in 1981-82 — the picture is decidedly bleak. . . . The evidence from past recoveries shows that things could be — and arguably should be — much better than they are now. Which strongly suggests that, however bad the recession was, something the federal government is doing today is putting a drag on the normal recovery trajectory. Only by admitting there’s a problem will we ever have a chance of getting the current recovery back on track.” If you make it harder to create jobs, fewer jobs will be created.

Related: More than half of the new jobs created in the past 12 months were in Texas. “What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t? At its simplest: Don’t overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, ‘Open for Business.’ . . . At bottom, the struggle between national Republicans and Democrats is over whether the country will adopt a version of the Texas model, or of the Michigan, New York, or California model.”

UPDATE: Reader Chuck Allen writes:

One item that Rich Lowry forgot to metion about the “Texas Model” is the fact that the Texas legislature isn’t around to do a lot of spending or trouble-making. It “…meets once every two years for 140 days to produce a biennial budget.”

It is no surprise that it is the states with the full-time, left-leaning legislatures that are in such trouble. The representatives have nothing better to do than hang around and make our lives misserable, since as we know legislative success is not determined by the quality of bills, but by the quantity.

Yes, we could do worse than to make that the national approach.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY THING WORKING OUT FOR YOU? Michael Barone: Dems find careers threatened by Obamacare votes. “The rule seems to be that casting a decisive vote for Obamacare tends to be a career-ender.”

MISSING THE MAGIC: Walter Shapiro was underwhelmed by Obama’s Ohio speech. “Yet watching the faces in the crowd at the Ohio State rally and listening to the chatter afterward as the largely student audience wandered toward the restaurants and bars on High Street, I had a sense that the Obama piece was still missing in action.”

UPDATE: Brand failure. “Forty years ago, the real life Mad Men knew how badly a brand could be destroyed if they made impossible claims about a product, a lesson that the creators of Barack Obama’s image are relearning the hard way.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: Obama Clings Again! Blames “Scared” Voters. “Usually the ‘blame the customer’ approach, as Mark Shields calls it, takes hold in the wake of an election defeat. Obama has broken new ground by moving it up to three weeks in advance of the vote.”

MAUREEN DOWD UNHINGED about new queen bees. “Beaten at her own game, is she? Why yes. (She does impart one piece of information: Sharron Angle ‘campaigns at times with a .44 Magnum revolver in her 1989 GMC pickup.’ My word, what is not to like about her?!) The tough girls have not only given a clear alternative to the whiny victimhood of Dowd and her fellow gender-grievance-mongers; they have redefined political feminism. . . . Bad enough there was Sarah; now there is a whole flock of them. You can understand why Dowd is green with envy.”

ANOTHER “OVERWHELMINGLY WHITE” CROWD SPOTTED. “The picture at top shows the crowd in attendance at the start of the Democrat Party rally for Rep. Loretta Sanchez. Former President Bill Clinton was the marquee speaker. It’s safe to say that this is about as close as one comes to a “mainstream” Democrat Party rally. And look at the crowd: White people are over-represented.” Not as overwhelmingly white as a Howard Dean meetup or an MSNBC hosts’ convention, but yeah.

WHEN YOU SEE Massachusetts Democrats positioning themselves as “outsiders” and omitting even the fact that they’re incumbents, what does it say about the political climate?

Still, don’t get cocky.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Here’s where I defend Christian fundamentalists from the charge that they are homophobic bullies.