Obamanomics Open Thread: Poverty on Track for Record Gain in 2009

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Here's change you can believe in!

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 - the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency - are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings. [...]

The anticipated poverty rate increase - from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent - would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power. [...] (more stats follow)

Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.

Among the 18-64 working-age population, the demographers expect a rise beyond 12.4 percent, up from 11.7 percent. That would make it the highest since at least 1965, when another Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, launched the war on poverty that expanded the federal government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care. 

To be sure, this is really bad news for Obama and Democrats.

However, if the poverty rate ends up being the highest since LBJ started this "war on poverty," doesn't it mean we've lost, and that expanding "the federal government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care" has totally failed?

Of course, such an obvious conclusion won't be made by the Left which will certainly use this data to call for even more socialism, correct?