What Rasmussen totally misses in this analysis is the influence the media is attempting to have on the perception of the state of the economy. The legacy media is in a full court press to produce only good economic news, even in this state of dismal economic malaise. The question to me is not how the economy is doing, but how effective they will be in pulling this deception off.
I've been wondering about this lately, and I thinking the answer is that they will be thoroughly ineffective. While people will probably hear the unemployment number drop below 8% (and the media will never mention that is the level 0 was going to save us from in the first place) how much is that really going to influence people who know someone out of work, haven't gotten a raise, have seen food and gas prices rising, work in jobs where they have reduced positions and are expected to do more with less, couldn't sell their house if they wanted to, etc?
And they can push the whole "we just need to do MORE" Paul Krugman nonsense all they want, or perhaps "it would have been so much worse". IMO, the American public has little patience, and four years is long enough that they'll be ready to give someone else a try. Too bad it's Romney.