Never under estimate the power of denial or political discourse. A day before we learn that unemployment has reached 9.7 percent, Vice President Biden — talking at the Brookings Institution — tells us that the stimulus spending is working great. Whatever.

First, let’s not forget that one argument Biden made back in January to get Congress to pass the stimulus bill is that without it unemployment would reach 9 percent by the end of 2010.

Also, read this great piece by National Review’s editors this morning about Biden’s speech. For instance:

“If you look at the Recovery Act as a two-year marathon,” Biden said, “we’re at the nine-mile mark. . . . Two hundred days in, the Recovery Act is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected.” To the contrary: There are plenty of reasons to think that the stimulus has been as inefficient and ineffective as its critics feared it would be unemployment is getting worse rather than improving as predicted, countries that spent less on stimulus (and those that employed tax-rate reductions), are recovering more quickly, etc. and Biden’s exaggerations only served to highlight these reasons.
We don’t feel better. Do you?

I don’t.