What issues are most important to voters this presidential election year? If you said the economy, jobs and the budget deficit, congratulations, you are like the rest of America. But if you said gay marriage, birth control and pranks Mitt Romney pulled in high school in 1965, then you either already are, or may have a future in the liberal media.

The Labor Department reports that 367,000 more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week. That is still about 100,000 more than prerecession levels. Economists lowered their economic growth projection for 2012 from an already stagnant 2.2 percent to an anemic 1.5 percent. Gallup reported one-in-three young U.S. workers is underemployed. The federal budget deficit is at an all-time high. Americans are fleeing the workforce in record numbers. And if Congress and Obama do nothing, we will all be hit with a job-killing $494 billion tax hike on New Year’s Day.