Barack Obama was preaching to the choir the other day.

He declared during a Democratic Party fundraiser that Americans “are better off now than when I came into office.”

Do you think?

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/206591-obama-americans-better-off-under-his-presidency

That the president would say such a thing is no surprise. Incumbents make these proclamations when they’re out raising money for their party in an election year.

But … wait for it.

The other side is going to level the equally non-surprising broadsides at the president for dredging up that bad old recession he inherited when he took office on Jan. 20, 2009.

You remember that time, right? The job market was hemorrhaging jobs by 700,000 — give or take — a month. Unemployment was heading toward a peak of around 10 percent. Banks were failing. Auto dealerships were tanking. Oh, and we were fighting two wars and were losing American lives on Iraq and Afghanistan battlefields daily.

Have we returned to some Nirvana after that terrible experience? No. We’re still on the road back.

Joblessness is down. The private sector is adding jobs instead of losing them. The auto industry has returned to fighting trim. Bank failures have ceased. The budget deficit — which accelerated as the government sought to jump-start the economy — is receding. Congress has enacted a health care overhaul that is working.

I believe the president has reason to crow about the state of things in the country, despite the continuing rhetoric from the opposition that is scouring the landscape for anything on which to stain Barack Obama’s record.

Hey, that’s politics. Republicans want to control the Senate as well as the House of Reps; Democrats want to keep control of the Senate. Both sides seek to exploit advantage where they find it.

Not quite two years after a bruising re-election campaign in which Republicans sought to focus on the economy, the president now can turn to that very issue as a signal that we’re on the right track.

To paraphrase GOP presidential nominee Ronald Reagan’s famous query during the 1980 campaign: Are we better off now than we were six years ago?

I’d have to say “yes.”