Barring some calamity like Sept. 11, how can our elections be about anything other than the hardships represented by those numbers? “Economic anger is going to drive our politics for a long, long time,” says Stuart Stevens, the political strategist whose candidate, Mitt Romney, struggled to reach disaffected voters. “The 2014 races are more regional and have a lot of different factors, but I can’t imagine that the candidate who wins in 2016 won’t be the one who best speaks to this.”

The Democrats’ answer has been a menu of expanded transfer programs. Obamacare is the largest, offering health premium subsidies to those lower on the income scale but burdening many in the middle who either earn too much for a subsidy or for whom cost increases outweigh any subsidy they might receive.

Then there are other transfers: skyrocketing numbers of Americans on disability, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and many more. The result, not an unhappy one for Democrats, is that more Americans are dependent on government than ever before.

Republicans are still searching for a response.