I've been thinking about the Politico article since it came out. If we look at the Scariest Chart ever, which admittedly contains some revisions which make things look a little bit worse than they did at the time, it's obvious that there was just never any reason for any confidence that the recovery was here.
Benen's graph might make this a bit more clear. Basically we had two ok but not awesome months and one good month in summer of 2010 (aka Recovery Summer) and then 3 ok but not awesome months this past Spring...and from that, everyone thought we could declare victory and go home.
