Not only are the American people not taking to the right-wing talking points about who owns the bad aspects of this economy, they are actually having an improved outlook as it is.  The same ABC poll (but also today's Rasmussen, for what that right-leaning pollster is worth,  and the CNN poll from a few days ago) shows that about 40% of the American people state that we are "on the right track," a huge turnaround from 7% to 11% polling data we had seen from November through January for the same question.  Apparently Obama gets a ton of credit for his efforts in revitalizing the economy, and four times more people than had been the case are now feeling that we are on the track to achieving that.  

Of course, Republicans have stopped telling us that Obama also "owns" the stock market, given that the markets have embarked on a remarkable turnaround since hitting 6,440 on March 6 (today it hit 8,000 briefly) on a 20% + bull market.  It seems Republicans want Democrats to assume ownership of anything only when it is going down.  As the economy improves over the next 8 months and "right track" numbers improve to 50% + they will have lost even that ineffective talking point.  I listened in on Hannity's radio show yesterday and he predicted that the economy is on its way to a recovery, a positive GDP, still this year (effectively ending the recession,) all the time claiming that it will be merely a shallow recovery, short-lived, followed soon enough (he would not say how many months or years later) by an "armageddon meets judgement day" economic phase.

Republicans are now reduced to arguing that an eventual recovery WOULD have started sooner with Republicans at the helm, and that it WOULD have been more sustained and WOULD have come with higher GDP output.  Nobody is buying it, but without ideas they have nothing else left to say.  Pity the fools.    

Republican wilderness he went to, when he bailed from the sinking ship that was GW Bush.

I agree with Sidney B. who said:

Sidney Blumenthal, in an opinion piece in Salon, entitled "Matthew Dowd's not-so-miraculous conversion", described Dowd as an 'opportunist'

It's so unfair, isn't it? Bush and the Republicans are getting all of the blame (for the mess they helped create and allowed to fester), but will receive none of the credit when it turns around (after Obama and the democrats fix it)!

That's the right's talking point. I wish I was surprised.

What an ass.  How can anyone take this kind of BS seriously?  Amazing.  

Surely Dowd belongs in the Styles section now?  She is just not a serious commentator.