Reagan won re-election in a landslide. People get very upset when you suggest that maybe this immense amount of whining about other people’s economic problems (most people say their own finances are fine) might be a bit self-indulgent. Mea culpa. I was wondering the other day about our more recent experience: the Great Recession. That was just 15 years ago and it was extremely painful and the recovery was much slower than this one has been. Looking at the index of consumer sentiment over the period of 2009-2012 when Obama was handily re-elected (if not in a landslide) the trajectory is about the same. It was in the doldrums until 2012, at which point it ticked up to exactly the level it is today. Yet some people were so convinced that Obama was in deep trouble throughout that year that when it was clear he won on election night, Karl Rove even had a fit on the air, convinced that it was impossible that Obama had won: Shortly after Fox News became one of the first to call Ohio for the president, Rove chastised its “decision desk.” “This is premature,” Rove said, adding later that he’d be “very cautious about intruding in this process.” As NPR’s David Folkenflik wrote earlier today, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly tried hard to convince Rove that the network’s analysts had found no plausible way for Romney to overcome his deficit. David reports: I’m not saying it’s the same situation. There’s so much about this…