In his book _Don't think of an elephant!_ cognitive linguist George Lakoff cautions against framing the debate in terms defined by one's opponents, i.e. GOP and their mouthpieces.
One can focus on the decimal point differences between various GDP estimates - a number encumbered with a high degree of subjective judgments to begin with - just as GOP and the army of conservative pundits want it to frame.
Or one can break that frame as ask "If it is so good, why is it so bad?" and come up with concrete examples of people just not making it in this supposedly "booming" economy - people with whom most US-sers could identify. I am pretty sure most people do not give two shits abut the decimal fraction of the GDP figure but can respond well to something vivid and tangible.
BTW, yesterday I was listening to a debate on the talk show on the local NPR station http://www.wypr.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=features&id=1 featuring a researcher from the Brookings Institute and a Bush booster from some astro-turf organization dedicated to "ease the tax burden." Although my heart was with the Brookings Institute guy, I was appalled by his ineffective way of arguing. He seemed to be utterly lost in the technical intricacies and interpretations of statistical data and getting stuck to only one point amounting to that only marginal, the most poor elements, of society will be penalized by Bush tax policies. He essentially conceded the ground to the Bush booster when he finally admitted that "you may know these data better than me."
What's wrong with these liberals nowadays? Can they stop beating around the bush (no pun intended) and make a convincing non-technical argument?
Wojtek