How will economy play in ’16?

Conflicting data on the state of the economy present a huge dilemma for both parties.

With fewer than 18 months to go before the 2016 elections, Republicans and Democrats are struggling to iron out their respective strategies on job growth — traditionally a top issue for voters.

{mosads}Political analysts say if the economy soars over the next year, it will bode well for Hillary Clinton, the heavy favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. But if it sputters, the GOP will repeatedly attempt to tie Clinton’s economic policies to President Obama’s.

Republicans have shifted their economic message in recent weeks and are again criticizing the White House for what they say is a lackluster economic recovery, just months after Republicans sought to take credit for an improving economy at the start of the year.

In January, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the new majority leader, touted what looked like an accelerating economy.

“After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope,” McConnell said. “The uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress.”

On Tuesday, he called the recovery disappointing after the Commerce Department reported the economy shrank 0.7 percent in the first quarter of the year.

The government originally reported a meager 0.2 percent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter.

“This has been the slowest recovery after a deep recession since World War II,” McConnell said.

Mixed economic signals have given lawmakers and strategists on both sides of the aisle fits as they struggle to tailor their political messages.

The economy created 223,000 jobs in April, but only 85,000 jobs in March. It was growing at a much faster pace at the end of last year, when the Department of Labor reported 423,000 and 329,000 new jobs in November and December, respectively.

GDP grew at 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and reached 5 percent growth in the third, the strongest quarter in 11 years.

Democrats are torn over how loudly to trumpet Obama’s economic record.

The unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent in April, nearly half of the 10 percent peak hit in October of 2009. The economy has added private sector jobs for 62 straight months and created 12.3 million private sector jobs over the course of Obama’s presidency.

Many Democrats feel they should have done more to tout the president’s economic record during the midterm elections, when other issues — the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — grabbed the spotlight.

“The economy’s gotten better and better in spite of Republicans trying to kill the Ex-Im Bank and injecting more uncertainty into business decisions,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Brown, a leading progressive voice in the party, said Democrats should have done more to point out economic progress, although with the caveat that “wages have been far too stagnant.”

“I don’t believe it’s all blue skies. You place blame where it belongs but you talk about accomplishments at the same time,” he said.

“It’s a hell of a lot better than it was,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Jon Tester (Mont.). “We absolutely could have talked much more about how the economy has morphed over the past six years.”

But senior Democratic strategists were leery of cheering the economy last year; while the macroeconomic numbers looked good, many Americans did not feel the benefits personally.

Obama acknowledged in a “60 Minutes” interview in September that many families were not feeling the recovery because their incomes remained flat.

Yet, in private meetings with Democrats last fall, he urged them to hammer home the successes of his economic policies on the campaign trail.

“He said we’re going to close this campaign in the last 30 days and focus on the economy. We have a good story to tell,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) recalled.

“We never got to it. It was kids at the border, Ebola and some other things,” he said of the issues that eclipsed the economy.

Clinton will face her own tough choice in the 2016 race.

Democrats say she shouldn’t run away from Obama’s economic record but add she has to find a way to differentiate herself.

“She should probably have her own economic platform to run off of. It certainly can contain part of what Obama did but it should be hers,” Tester said.  

Grover Norquist, a top GOP strategist and president of Americans for Tax Reform, urged Republicans in December to take credit for the recovery.

At the time, The Huffington Post reported: “Grover Norquist would like Republicans to shut up about how bad the economy is.”

He argued back then that implementing spending cuts known as sequestration and keeping most of the Bush-era tax cuts  in place boosted the economy.

Norquist now says the recovery is turning into a bust because Obama walked away from his goal of cutting corporate tax rates and has not pushed trade legislation emphatically enough.

“The opportunity to turn this around, which I thought was coming, and doing tax reform seems to have faded,” he told The Hill Wednesday. “I think the chances of getting the bounce that we were hoping for is diminishing because he’s just not willing to do anything.” 

Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.) maintained this week that Obama owns the tepid recovery.

“If you look at the president’s record, it’s easy to see why our economy is still sputtering along,” he said, citing ObamaCare, the federal debt and new regulations.

Democrats accuse Republicans of playing rhetorical games.

“Politics,” said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democratic leader.

“It’s typically political, and I think it’s what turns voters off,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.