Opinion: The Economy Is Not Recovering, But Instead Slowly Slipping Away
By Douglas E. Schoen
President Obama’s only claim to reelection is that he and his team steadied America during its time of economic uncertainty and are, albeit slowly, growing the economy. Friday’s anemic jobs numbers show that in fact the economy is not recovering, but rather, unfortunately slipping away, and with the state of the race as it is, the election possibly, irrevocably, too.
In February of 2012, we added 227,000 new jobs, revised upward from 210,000. Things looked good for the economy and Obama’s reelection prospects. But since then things have gone downhill.
Friday we discovered that in March we created 143,000 new jobs, 10,000 less than we originally thought. Not robust growth, but certainly no cause for panic. In April, however, we added just 77,000 new jobs, a figure that has been revised downward from 115,000.
In May we netted just 69,000 jobs, revised downward from a projected 150,000. Further bad news, the unemployment rate has climbed up to 8.2%. I think both my fellow Americans, and especially the Obama administration, have cause to worry.
Today’s lackluster jobs figures are symptomatic of a weak economy, and that’s disquieting for all Americans. But with several new polls being released recently which show the president virtually tied with Romney in three crucial swing states (Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada), this is especially troubling for the Obama reelection team.
An obvious observation: a best-fit line showing the amount of jobs created would be going downward, steeply. Another observation: if one were to draw a best-fit line through Obama’s poll numbers in the three states mentioned above, it too would be going downward. Romney’s go up.
The three are most definitely intertwined.
