Fox publishes 'richer, safer and stronger' the morning its own party loses the House and Senate

…(cont) On October 15th, a Harris poll found 61 percent of the people surveyed believed the country was in recession, and 65 percent of independents said the economy was getting worse. That's three weeks out — and it's independents, the group that doesn't belong to either side's spin, the group that just answers the phone and tells you what their grocery bill looks like.

On October 28th, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, at one of the highest pre-election levels in over twenty years, in its last meeting before the vote. Two board members wanted to raise rates further; the Fed said no, not yet. The Guardian's own subheadline on that story said the September increase had "infuriated" the president — that's the paper's characterization, not a word that appears in the Fed's statement. But the timing isn't in dispute: the people who set the cost of money looked at the same economy Ingraham would later call stronger, and they left the rate where it was. Seven days before her column ran.

So the ledger reads: a poll says the public believes the economy is getting worse. A central bank, looking at the same data, declines to ease up. A newspaper calls the vote a rout the same morning the agenda gets its victory lap. A poll, a rate decision and an election call are three different instruments, measuring different things, at different moments. But they are measuring the same economy, in the same three weeks, and none of them reconcile with "richer, safer and stronger."

Someone had the Harris poll. Someone had the Fed's decision. Neither one made it into the column.

That's not a stray number, hon. That's the baseline the piece was written against, and it was sitting in the same month's filing the whole time.