Weak jobs report gives Romney campaign a much needed breather


Woman thanks President Obama for healthcare with tears in her eyes. Click for her story at HuffPo.

As expected the June jobs report was weak, the nation added only 80,000 new jobs last month. A far cry from the number needed to match the always growing US workforce. Unemployment remained at 8.2%, so, GOP trolls in congress, grats!

LAT— The economy has added just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That’s one-third of 226,000 a month created in the first quarter. Job creation is also trailing last year’s pace through the first six months of 2012.

Stock futures fell modestly after the report came out. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 24 points before the report at 8:30 a.m., and were down 60 points minutes later. Yields for government bonds sank, an indication that investors were putting money into the Treasury market. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 1.59 percent just before the report and 1.57 percent after it came out.

The report allows the Romney campaign to shift away from a losing healthcare argument and move back to hitting the economy — in fact they have already scheduled a presser on the jobs report.

Update: Romney spoke briefly, basically insisting that to get out the Great Recession caused by conservative economic policies, we have to reenact the same conservative polices that caused the Great Recession. He even went so far as to claim those catastrophic policies have been proven to work “again and again” with a sober, straight face. His apparent ease and sincerity telling that super-nova of a whopper was chilling.

It couldn’t come soon enough. President Obama campaign fiercely over the holiday week, sharply criticizing Romney as an out of touch rich guy, an outsourcer who doesn’t care about US jobs, and called him out for being the exact opposite of what we need after the Great Recession: a Wall Street investment banskta. The President’s broadsides against the HMS Romney seemed to be getting traction. It remains to be seen if Obama can effectively define his extremely conservative opponent in this way, or if it’s just a blip over the Fourth of July week.

BLOOM — Polls show that linking Romney to the outsourcing of U.S. jobs when he was at Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, which he co- founded, is an effective approach with voters in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Obama will end the trip.

“If the election’s about Romney and Bain, then the president’s going to win,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. “For Romney, it has to be about Obama: Obama and jobs, Obama and leadership, Obama and the economy, and Obama and health-care.”

Comments

  1. d cwilson says

    Republican sabotage is working!

    It’s disgraceful that one of our two parties is hailing a sluggish economy as “good news”.

  2. The Lorax says

    It’s starting to build. Obama is taking jabs, but he has always shown himself to be a clever combatant; he’s going to wait until Romney really screws up, and then he’s going to throw in that mean right hook. And the Democrats have so much juice on Romney; hell, they could just run the Daily Show as their campaign ads.

    This fall is going to be great.

  3. says

    Romney basically went out and insisted to get out the Great Recession we have to reenact the same policies that caused it. Which he said — I’m actually chuckling as I type this — have been proven to work again and again.

    I wish I were kidding, because he could absolutely win and he’ll probably be the worst big government spending deficit monster reg slashing conservative we have ever had in the Oval Office. I don’t know if the US can weather another catastrophe of that magnitude.

  4. d cwilson says

    Yeah, the deficit will explode under Romney, but that’s okay, because when a republican is in office, “deficits don’t matter.”

Leave a Reply