Obama hit on most of the Democrats’ economic talking points in his acceptance speech Thursday night. But he mostly stayed away from the argument that jobs are coming back, albeit slowly.

His lack of specifics on jobs and other matters, in favor of a message of faith in the direction of the nation and his administration, was seen as feeble by conservative pundits and presidential by liberals.

I can’t help but wonder, was his speech shaped in part by his advance warning about this morning’s all-important August jobs and unemployment report? The consensus is that employers added 125,000 jobs, and that unemployment remained flat at 8.3 percent — not a number that will win many votes.

Although the data is guarded like a military attack plan before the 8:30 am eastern time release, presidents are said to get a heads-up the night before. Perhaps Obama heard bad news about job creation  and adjusted his speech accordingly, away from progress, toward hopefulness and faith.

My guess: only 78,000 jobs created, but unemployment ticks down to 8.2 percent.

 

 

3 Responses to Did Obama Stay Away From Jobs Because He Knew Bad News?

  1. Mitchell Simpson says:

    Yes … an not a single mention of his big stimulus package that cost tax payers, including you Dan, hundreds of billions of dollars and not a single mention of his biggest “achievement” Obamacare because of how unpopular it is and how costly it is going to be. Sadly, like many in the media, Obama isn’t facing the facts and certainly isn’t going to talk about his incredible list of shortcomings. Other than looking good on TV and reading a teleprompter, he’s hollow and has nothing to offer except more promises that won’t be kept. Look back to his acceptance speech in Denver in ’08, this was more of the same, just smaller scale setting.

    Why doesn’t the Courant start stepping up and holding this guy to task?

    Even a Wesleyan grad will have to admit that our rockstar, campaigner-in-chief isn’t wearing any clothes and has been a dismal failure.

    Go ahead and support him, but give him the honest coverage your readership deserves.

    Unemployment ticked down, but people are falling off the roles, too!

  2. Dan Haar says:

    Mitchell, the most important question here is not how well Obama has performed — we can’t know that because we can’t know what the alternatives would have done. But we can know Obama’s VOA, or Value Over Alternative — similar to baseball’s VORP, or Value over Replacement Player. And Obama’s VOA is very high, because the alternative is Mitt Romney, a technocrat without a vision, whose economic plan is a warmed-over version of failed Bush policies.
    What, precisely, should Obama have done? More direct spending? The nutcases in the House, led by Ryan, blocked that. Less direct spending? In a near-depression, are you serious?

  3. [...] Did Obama Stay Away From Jobs Because He Knew Bad News? [...]