WASHINGTON — So much for recovery summer.
Vice President Joe Biden yesterday declared that the economy is in a full-blown “depression” for millions of Americans.
“The unemployed are in real trouble,” Biden admitted in a campaign speech in Dubuque, Iowa.
“My grandpa used to say — he’s from Scranton — he’d say, ‘Joey, when the guy in Dunmore — the next town over — when the guy in Dunmore’s out of work it’s an economic slowdown,” said the folksy veep. “When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.’
“It’s a depression for millions and millions of Americans,” continued Biden. “It’s a depression.”
It was a surprisingly dour tone for Biden, who two years ago this month helped kicked off President Obama’s “recovery summer” p.r. campaign to tout the success of his nearly $1 trillion stimulus.
The remark from the infamously off-message vice president only fueled criticism from Republican challenger Mitt Romney that Obama’s economic policies have failed.
Biden also borrowed the line from President Reagan, who used it on the campaign trail in 1980 running against President Jimmy Carter.
“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours,” Reagan said. “And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
Biden — for obvious reasons — omitted the punch line.
Obama will get to make a personal pitch to middle-class voters next week when he embarks on a bus tour through battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The tour, Obama’s first of the 2012 campaign, begins next Thursday, which coincides with the release of new jobs numbers and will allow him to respond in person to concerned middle-class voters.
Speaking on the banks of the Mississippi River yesterday, Biden conceded that the economy was recovering too slowly for too many.
But he insisted that Obama had the country on the right track and Republican Mitt Romney would only make things worse for middle-class Americans.