I keep asking …

Investors Business Daily has an answer:

If President Obama had run in 2008 promising to cut family incomes, shove more people into poverty, create greater inequality and make people more dependent on the federal government — and that black Americans would fare worse than everyone else — would he have won that election?

Well, the latest Census Bureau report shows that these are precisely the results Obama has delivered since taking office.

According to that report, median annual household income dropped by more than $2,000 in real terms since 2009, a 4.1% decline. Blacks fared even worse, watching their incomes fall 5.7% between 2009 and 2011.

And despite more than three full years of economic recovery, nearly 2.7 million more people are languishing in poverty than in 2009. The current 15% poverty rate is well above where it stood in Obama’s first year in office — 14.3%.

Here, too, blacks have fared worse, with the black poverty rate now at 27.6%, up from 25.8% in 2009. And while the number of whites in poverty dropped slightly in 2011, it continued to climb among blacks, the census data show. …

It just shows that government spending can’t generate prosperity for the middle class.

And it shows that when your policies choke off what should have been a solid economic recovery, the only ones who benefit are those already at the top.

You might try to blame these lousy numbers on the recession that started under Bush.

Except for the fact that the recession ended five months after Obama took office, and all these dire results occurred during Obama’s “recovery,” when his policies were in full effect.

Any wonder President Obama wants this to be a “choice” election, rather than a referendum on his record?

But a referendum on Obama’s record is a “choice” election. Just like 1980.