[thesloppy]

'the economy' is effectively a rigged topic. For most of my lifetime the Dems have been the only ones balanced budgets, so Dem administrations not only have to come in and figure out how to pay for previous GOP governance, they have to weaken their own campaign under a threat of raising everyone's taxes to pay for debts run up by the GOP. The better each Dem president does at balancing the various poles of the economy, the more slack the next GOP president has to play/campaign with.