This on McCain being reported from a new poll:

McCain was seen as a better steward of the economy than either Democrat despite their repeated criticism of his economic credentials. He led Obama by 3 points and Clinton by 5 points on the question of who would best manage the economy.

This despite McCain showing no reason to believe he would be a good steward of the economy, and in fact demonstrating that he would not be. The only thing he might do differently is to not favor pork as much, but with Democrats in control of Congress, he would do that anyway–and would still likely favor his own party’s pork in any case. But McCain wishes not only to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but to add his own to the pile, while allowing the middle class to lose their homes while he bailed out those who foreclose on them.

So why is McCain seen as a better steward? For no better reason than he is a Republican, and Republicans–completely contrary to all evidence–are still considered better on the economy. Yet another baseless favor McCain will enjoy, like being seen as stronger on campaign finance reform despite having violated federal laws on campaign finance and surrounded himself with lobbyists, or like he is considered strong on defense and foreign policy despite having authored the failed surge, promised an endless war in Iraq and a new costly war in Iran, and so much more to his detriment. He is seen as a centrist maverick when he is really a strong conservative who readily toadies to the most extreme elements of his party. And so forth and so on.

Kevin Drum put it succinctly and well:

The results are simple: Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There’s just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.

Democratic presidents generate more jobs–even the worst Democrat in the past century has outperformed the best Republican. Deficits fall under Democrats, and skyrocket under Republicans. The rich get just as rich under both, but while the middle class and the poor suffer under Republicans, they do very well under Democrats. While Democrats keep spending down to a dull roar, Republicans spend like there’s no tomorrow; while Democrats responsibly try to find ways to pay for what they spend, Republicans carelessly pile up massive debts which cripple the economy, costing us $469 billion this year alone just to pay interest [OMB figures, Excel file] on our Republican-generated debt. Without the interest payments on the Reagan-Bush-Bush deficits alone, we would have a balanced budget right now.

The facts are clear for anyone to see: elect a Democrat, and your income will go up, jobs will increase, the deficit will fall, the economy will do better. Elect a Republican, the reverse will happen. And yet, millions of Americans continue to vote against their own financial interests based on nothing more than a fairy tale, a PR sham job.