"The private sector is doing fine."

What do you say to a President who says that during times like these? Persistently high un- and underemployment. Banks that won’t or can’t lend. A health care sector in the legal limbo of a massive (and massively partisan) upheaval. Falling consumer confidence…

I can’t go on. It hurts too much. But I guess I’m just being melodramatic, because the private sector is really doing fine.

Or maybe Obama needs to read a little Jim Pethokoukis, who reminds us:

1. Private-sector jobs have increased by an average of just 105,000 over the past three months and by just 89,000 a month during the entire Obama Recovery.

In 1983 and 1984, during the supply-side Reagan Boom, private sector jobs increased by an average of 292,000 a month. Adjusted for population, that number is more like 375,000 private-sector jobs a month

2. If the labor force participation rate for May had just stayed where it was in April, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4%. As it is, the U.S. economy is suffering is longest sustained bout of 8% unemployment or higher since the Great Depression.

3. Private-sector GDP rose just 2.6% in the first quarter, after rising a measly 1.2% last year.

I guess the only thing you say to a President that deluded is: “There you go again.”