Unemployment Drops to 7.8%, Romney Supporters Not Happy

     The GOP has been cheerleading bad economic numbers for four years. Romney on Wednesday, rather hyperbolically claimed that the middle class has been "crushed" under the President. In reality it was Bush who crushed the middle class. We've actually seen 4.5 million new private sector jobs since February 2010-when we started to see the real results of the stimulus. The President has in fact laid the groundwork for future prosperity.

    Of course, as Bill Clinton said at the DNC the trouble is that people can't necessarily feel it yet. This is what Romney has been banking on. He hopes to benefit from the economy that the President has repaired. It's as if the new plane is ready for takeoff soon and Romney hopes to take over the cockpit now so he can wrongly get credit that isn't his.

   Since Clinton's speech-the whole DNC was a huge success-we've seen Americans start to feel better as confidence has spiked. Today we got a number that's sure to make Americans feel better too-the unemployment number is now under 8% for the first time since the President took office.

   So are Romney and his rich friends happy, considering they've been belaboring the 8% number for months? No. They wanted bad numbers. They claim some nefarious Obama conspiracy-he told the BLS what to say the number was and they complied. One rich friend of Romney's, Jack Welch, had this piece of sour grapes:

  "Business community titan and Mitt Romney backer Jack Welch is among those who suspect the White House of cooking the labor figures, as he tweeted a few minutes ago:

  "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers."

   "There are many who will point out that the unemployment rate fell on increased hiring but also people leaving the workforce after giving up on finding a job. But the charge from Welch, a serious figure, that the numbers were cooked to distract from debating policies, was notable."

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/?hp=bh

    Cmon, Maggie Haberman! Can't you do better than that? Welch is a serious figure? He's an Obama hater. Mitt Romney isn't celebrating the lowered job numbers, either, he's splitting hairs:

    "Mitt Romney is out with a statement on the jobs numbers, which he characterizes as not good enough:

“This is not what a real recovery looks like. We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office. If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11%. The results of President Obama's failed policies are staggering – 23 million Americans struggling for work, nearly one in six living in poverty and 47 million people dependent on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. The choice in this election is clear. Under President Obama, we’ll get another four years like the last four years. If I’m elected, we will have a real recovery with pro-growth policies that will create 12 million new jobs and rising incomes for everyone.”
 

      Now Ms. Habberman does some more editorializing for Romney:

     "There's no question that the 8 percent talking point was useful to Romney. But ultimately, what will matter is how people feel about where their lives are - for those for whom things have improved, the figures may seem fine, and for those out of work or struggling, they won't."
  
     It's as if she's trying to assure us that this won't undercut Romney's "crushed" argument in the least. The 8% number doesn't matter. When it was over 8% that's all we could hear about. Now that it's under 8% it doesn't matter what the exact rate is.

     Even Romney's argument about how the numbers-114,000 jobs created-are worse than July and August is misleading as he's comparing apples to oranges. The better July August numbers were revised up. Remember how the original August numbers were only 96,000? That day-right after the convention-Romney and Ryan had a field day. Ryan was on CNBC within minutes to gloat.

     For the full scoop see here

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/49299718

     After all the crowing he did about the initial August numbers shouldn't he be admitting that he crowed to soon rather than without missing a beat using the revised numbers to today's preliminary numbers?

      Does Maggie Habermas really want to suggest the President may have fudged the BLS numbers because Jack Welch says so? If the BLS is so corrupted that the President can simply order it to fudge the numbers at will, why didn't he do it all those times when the numbers weren't so good and Romney and the GOP were cheerleading bad news?

     Romney claimed at his convention that he had wanted the President to succeed as he roots for America. The comments of him and his rich friend today again belie that.