The current re-election campaign tactics being waged by the Obama team make for some of the most bizarre in recent history, as the Obama campaign attempts to focus solely on destroying its opponent, Mitt Romney, while occasionally throwing in some made up statistic in defense of Barack Obama's tenure.   However, there is ample reason for this strategy: namely, Obama's people have no other choice, as the economic plight of the American people has reached crisis proportions.

An article in the New York Times spells out this dire scenario:

Across the country, in almost every demographic, Americans earn less today than they did in June 2009, when the recovery technically started.  As of June, the median household income for all Americans was $50,964, or 4.8% lower than its level three years earlier, when the inflation adjusted median income was $53,508.

The decline looks even worse when comparing today's incomes to those when the recession began in December 2007.  Then, the median income was $54,916, meaning that incomes have fallen 7.2% since the economy last peaked.

(Median household income is defined as that amount which divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount and half having income below that amount.)

By comparison, during the last major economic downturn and subsequent recovery, which occurred during the Reagan years in 1981-1984 (in many ways far worse than what greeted Obama in 2009), the median household income actually increased by 2.2%.

A further analysis of the current precipitous drop in income reveals the following:

Households led by people between the ages of 55 and 64 have taken the biggest hit.  Their household incomes have dropped by 9.7% over the past three years (a decline of nearly $6,000 per year).

The household income for those 25 to 34 fell by 8.9%, while that for people under the age of 24 fell 6.1%.  (The income level for the youngest group has fallen the least, as theirs is generally the lowest level of overall income experienced by any group.)

More older people (those over 65) have been forced to remain in the workforce to compensate for the loss in income.  In 2011, nearly 17% of people over 65 worked as compared to 11% twenty years ago.

How has the working population and the decline in median household income fared based on education levels?

Those with a high diploma have seen their incomes drop by 6.9%; those with some college but no degree, 9.3%; an Associate degree, a decline of 8.6%; and those with a bachelor's degree or higher, 5.9%.

Lastly, the loss in median household income by race/ethnicity of the household:

Black: -11.1%

White: -5.2%

Hispanic: -4.1%

This is the worst period of sustained income loss since the Great Depression, particularly as the economy has supposedly been in a recovery mode since June of 2009.  

The United States has been living on the residue of the massive economic recovery and growth cycle begun in 1983-84.  That cycle is now over.  The policies of the Obama administration have stifled and nearly destroyed the ability of the economy to grow and produce jobs, income, and wealth.  Thus the re-election tactics of the Obama machine.  If he and his radical cohorts are re-elected, the dire income statistics shown above will continue to worsen.