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Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

DNC Excitement Dulled By Romney, Obama's Jobs Report Battle

Paige Brettingen |
September 7, 2012 | 3:21 p.m. PDT

Executive Producer

Romney wasted no time criticizing Obama over the weak jobs report (Courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)
Romney wasted no time criticizing Obama over the weak jobs report (Courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

While President Obama's fervent speech strived to reignite hope for Americans at the final night of the Democratic National Convention (breaking a Twitter record of 52,757 tweets per minute in the process), the job report gave another impression of the nation's future: Fewer jobs were added in August bringing about the lowest job participation rate in over three decades.

Seizing the moment, GOP nominee Mitt Romney called the jobs report the DNC's "hangover" and blamed the disappointing numbers on Obama's lack of economic leadership. Obama meanwhile, cited the Republicans in Congress as the ones to blame.

Reuters reported:

  • Pouncing on the jobs data to slam Obama's handling of the economy - the top concern of voters - Romney called the figures "disheartening" and "simply unimaginable" as he campaigned in Iowa.
  • "There's almost nothing the president's done in the last three and a half, four years, that gives the American people confidence he knows what he's doing when it comes to jobs and the economy," Romney said.
  • While noting that the private sector has now generated jobs for 30 straight months, Obama - returning to the campaign trail in New Hampshire - acknowledged that: "It's not good enough. We need to create more jobs faster."
  • At the same time, he pointed out that Republicans in Congress had blocked much of his jobs plan and accused Romney of making promises to revitalize the economy but not telling voters how he would do it.

Though Romney touted he could have done "a heck of a lot better job" than Obama, claiming there would be "9 million more jobs in America today than they are," Obama's campaign retorted that Romney is trying to "rewrite history."

"GM and Chrysler are in existence, creating jobs, and posting some of their most profitable quarters in history because President Obama bet on American workers,” Obama for America spokeswoman Lis Smith said to the L.A. Times. “If Mitt Romney had had his way, the American auto industry and the more than 1 million jobs it supports would cease to exist.”

As the weak job growth resparks the long-recurring bipartisan economic battle, analysts have acknowledged that, yes, politicians are the ones to blame—but as the saying goes, it takes two:

"It's a failure of leadership," said Joseph Brusuelas, senior economist at Bloomberg LP to the Huffington Post. "After close to four years of Obama administration policy and two years of GOP rule, there's enough blame to go around."

"Two years of Congressional inaction in the face of high unemployment and with interest rates at the zero lower bound is inexcusable," said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, reported the Huffington Post.

 

See more Neon Tommy coverage of the DNC Convention 2012 here and the 2012 Presidential Election here.

Reach Executive Producer Paige Brettingen here.



 

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