Stick to the Facts

I always find it amusing when I hear surrogates on either side of the aisle -- but more often on the Republican side -- try to spin something that has so obviously benefited the other side as evidence of the other side's failure.  To wit, former Romney adviser Alex Castellanos, on Obama's work on the Hurricane Sandy relief effort:

President Obama stepped in and he’s doing the job he should be doing, great, good for him. Wish he’d done the same on the economy.

Asshole.  When your party leaves behind a towering inferno of economic ruin, and then hands the new president and his team a couple of garden hoses to put it out (garden hoses that you then proceed to step on and kink up to slow down or even stop the water flow), you don't get to complain about how he's done on the economy.  It just shows how small Romney is when it comes to criticizing the president.  There just isn't much there to criticize, because when you stick to the facts, the president's done very well.

Obama as of this past Wednesday has a 78 percent approval rating on how he's responded to the hurricane.  And the last poll I saw showed that a growing number of Americans believe the country is on the right track. 

But let's forget about polls.  Let's deal with facts, because FACTS MATTER.  Today's economic news showed an uptick in the unemployment rate, to 7.9% after being 7.8% the previous month.  The economic data also showed that job creation for October was 171,000 new jobs, and for August and September the numbers were revised upward by another 84,000 jobs.  Economists agree that the uptick in unemployment numbers was that a larger number of Americans were rejoining the job force and looking for work because jobs are now out there to get. 

I know who will be elected president next Tuesday as much as the next guy, which is to say I don't really know.  I do believe the result will be close.  The focus in the next few days will be on the so-called swing states to see how they will tip.  I think that the president has a very good chance of being reelected, more than three times than Romney, if Nate Silver is accurate.  But that still means that Romney has a 1 in 4 or 5 chance of being elected.  If I'm a betting man and the stakes are that high, I like those odds.