The last land mine in Obama’s path is defused [View all]

[babylonsister]

The last land mine in Obama’s path is defused
By Greg Sargent


The last remaining political land mine embedded in Barack Obama’s path to reelection has failed to detonate.

With time fast running out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning released the last monthly jobs report we’ll see in this election. The news was unexpectedly decent: 171,000 nonfarm jobs added in October, and unemployment essentially unchanged at 7.9 percent.

What’s more, the August numbers were revised upwards from 142,000 to 192,000, and the September numbers were boosted from 114,000 to 148,000. This suggests the possibility that something was stirring in the economy that we hadn’t picked up, and could help explain why Obama’s small but seemingly durable edge in the electoral college has persisted.

The news will be taken as a relief by the Obama campaign. It will allow Obama to continue making the case that the economy is healing — and it will undercut Mitt Romney’s closing argument that only putting him in charge will bring about a “real recovery.” However, today’s numbers are unlikely to impact the presidential race in a dramatic way. It solidifies the fundamentals that have persisted for many months now — this is a weak recovery, but it is a recovery, which means a very close presidential race, with a narrow advantage to the incumbent.

What these numbers really mean is that the last remaining catastrophe that could have derailed Obama’s reelection effort didn’t happen.

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