Apropos Sean's post on the results of the CNN survey, there are plenty of data points to to explain why Americans are visibly frustrated with the state of the economy. While Wall Street Banks are set to dish out record-breaking bonuses just a year after being bailed out of the financial collapse, things are not nearly so rosy on Main Street:

Nearly one in 10 homeowners with mortgages was at least one payment behind in the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in its survey. That translates into about five million households. [snip]

In the first stage of the housing collapse, defaults and foreclosures were driven by subprime loans. These loans had low introductory rates that quickly moved to a level that was beyond the borrower's ability to pay, even if the homeowner was still employed.

As the subprime tide recedes, high-quality prime loans with fixed rates make up the largest share of new foreclosures. A third of the new foreclosures begun in the third quarter were this type of loan, traditionally considered the safest. But without jobs, borrowers usually cannot pay their mortgages.

Once again, the lesson is simple: jobs are paramount. We see unemployment continuing to rise in 29 states, which means things are going to get worse before they get better.

This is exceedingly perilous political terrain for Democrats, who control all the levers of power but have spent the first eleven months of the year focused almost exclusively on health care. It's growing clearer by the day that the one signature item passed by this Congress (along strictly partisan lines), the stimulus, is at best a mixed bag and at worst a complete failure.

The Obama administration continues to insist its claim of more than 1 million jobs "saved or created" is legitimate, even as the underlying data supporting that claim has come under severe scrutiny.

Regardless, the claim is effectively trying to prove a negative (that the economy would be worse had the stimulus not passed), which is an utter intangible that doesn't matter a whit to voters. What matters to voters is what they see around them in the real world on a daily basis, and right now what they see is high and growing unemployment, and continued economic anxiety with no end in sight.