Maddow Blog: "Normal starts in 2014. Maybe."

Laura Conway (Maddow Blog):

In politics, nothing matters more than the unemployment rate. You could even argue that nothing else matters.

Today in the New York Times, David Leonhardt looks at how long it will take the nation to return to a healthy labor market -- full employment, as they say. This gets harder as we go, because in addition to having lost 8 million jobs in the recession, we keep adding people to the labor market as our population grows.

On his chart, normal happens when any of the red lines hits the black line. The gist: Even if we suddenly started adding jobs an unimaginable rate, we're looking at 2014. Which you'll note is after the 2012 elections.