There is a new jobs report out, with the usual caveats that the work force is shrinking, but the nominal unemployment rate is down to 8.5%. That’s the number which counts politically.
The rate would be 10.9% if the same number of people were in the workforce as when Obama took office
The media keeps telling us jobs is the main issue for the election. Maybe. But it’s a whole lot more, it’s a question of the vision thing.
Would you vote for Obama if the nominal unemployment rate were down to 8% by November 2012? Or 7.5%, or 7%.
Of course not, because it’s about jobs but it’s not all about jobs. It’s about what type of country this will be. Will we be a country of individual economic freedom or cogs in someone’s ideological wheel.
If a candidate cannot articulate that vision with passion based on history, the election will be a hostage to misleading statistics.
You know where I’m going with this, and you know I’m right.
Update: How will the line “I don’t think he’s a bad guy, I just think he’s in way over his head” work if the nominal unemployment rate keeps dropping? Once you take the vision thing out of the equation, as McCain did in 2008, we are at the mercy of whatever economic news is on the front pages in October 2012.
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