When President Obama took office, the economy was hemorrhaging jobs at pace unseen in generations. Nine months into his first year, the economy was starting to lose jobs at a slower pace, but the cumulative damage pushed the unemployment rate higher, spiking at 10 percent.
It's been improving ever since, including a drop in overall jobless rate from 9.1 percent to 7.8 percent over the last year. It's the best election-year improvement in the unemployment figures since Reagan's "Morning in America" re-election bid in 1984.
With this in mind, I rediscovered this clip while going through some notes over the weekend.
The video, originally uncovered by American Bridge in July, shows then-Gov. Mitt Romney in June 2006, reflecting on job creation in Massachusetts under his one term. Listening to the comments now, with the benefit of context and hindsight, Romney practically seems to be endorsing President Obama.
"I came in and the jobs had been just falling off a cliff. And I came in and they kept falling for 11 months. And then we turned around and we're coming back. And that's progress.
"And if you're going to suggest to me that somehow the day I got elected, somehow jobs should immediately turn around, well that would be silly. It takes a while to get things turned around. We were in a recession; we were losing jobs every month, we've turned around, and since the turn around we've added 50,000 jobs. That's progress.
"There will be some people who try to say, 'Well governor, net-net you've only added a few thousand jobs since you've been in.' Yeah, but ... we were in free-fall for three years and the last year of that I happened to be here and then we've turned it around as a state, private sector, government sector turned it around and now we're adding jobs.... I'm very pleased that over the last two, two-and-a-half years we've seen pretty consistent job growth."
It's just remarkable how much this reads like a defense of Obama. The president came in, jobs were falling off a cliff, and now the economy is coming back. The new version of Romney thinks the job market should have turned around "immediately," but the previous version of Romney thought this was "silly," because it "takes a while to get things turned around."
Romney was "very pleased" by "pretty consistent job growth" for two-and-a-half years? Over the last 30 months, American businesses have added over 5 million jobs.
As we talked about in July, Obama could recite Romney's comments, almost word for word, right now. And if he did, Romney, Republicans, and most of the media would reject it as unpersuasive, borderline desperate, spin.
The facts, however, are plain for anyone who cares about them.
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He has to answer to a different set of bosses now. The large Corporations, the people he is running for are all about profit, they won't give Romney one minute to breathe. Alot of the large corporations run their businesses in the same way. You can't force people to buy things, so, Romney has to lie, cheat, steal and deceive in order to please his bosses. An insurance salesman is the last thing this Country needs as a President.
While reading an article on ThinkProgress I read a post that I found funny and accurate. A number of us said we were going to repost this and I thank the author.
Ugh, I see that stupid smirk was already a permanent fixture on his face even back then.
Facts? FACTS???
The Republicans has already decided that 'Facts' aren't an important part of this election.
I'll just wait for the "correction" from the Romney camp, that somehow it was taken out of context.
In the perfect Romney, corporate world, education as well as the prison system will be totally privatized. This will give them a revolving door of poorly educated, needy people that will breed more crime, more prison profits and a multitude of low cost prison labor. The manufacturing numbers will go up because prisoners working for 60cents a day will make us competitive with China. It is not much of a stretch to imagine this scenario.
It's no stretch at all to imagine that scenario, since that's exactly what's happening. Look at the declining wages of the middle class (or the declining numbers of the middle class itself, for that matter), the inequity in income distribution, the number of manufacturing jobs vs. service based jobs, the attacks on any and all unions, etc. Anyone who can't see the ultimate end for all this isn't paying attention.
And yes, private prison corporations are very much in the business of contracting out prison labor at 20-50 cents an hour, and how can any other business compete with that when bidding? This used to be illegal, but thanks to our friends in ALEC, that's no longer the case.
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor
This is what the Obama campaign missed when they were deciding how to confront Romney. They were so worried about the sound and fury that was comming from the tea party that they were convinced they should try and paint him as a hard right ideologue which he isn't. They should have just told the truth and shown him for who he is: a man who will literally say anything to get elected.
The teaching moment here is that there are actually still moderate republicans out there that are feeling like their party has left them out much like the Regan Democrats back in the early 80's and if they had been courted more effectively then this election would most likely have been less of a referendum on Obama and job reports than a refutation of extremism.
No they had a good strategy to defining him as an out of touch plutocrat that shipped jobs overseas when he ran Bain. That defining of Romney made the 47% comment much more damaging.
But, when Romney chose to disavow all his positions of the last year during the debate, then team Obama goes to the flip flop route, because Romney opened himself up to it in front of 62 million people. People are not going to forget the corporate raider plutocrat that Romney has been defined as, they'll simple add flip flopping liar to that perception. And there is a ton of video evidence to help them see it.
When events on the ground warrant it, you have to change course. You adapt and you overcome.
I think the "out of touch plutocrat" line was a bit weak. The same case could have and has been made against many of our Presidents and Americans will forgive that a bit because as much as we love an underdog we love success too, we tend to vote our aspirations rather than our realities. The trick is to show that the success was attained through wisdom and ingenuity rather than ruthlessness and piracy and I don't think that argument was made strongly enough. this is an election about contrast and it's hard to contrast a chameleon.
Explain the lead in poll for Obama. Not only that, look inside the polling data, people were asked specifically about Romney Bain history. The people, specifically in the Midwest, were turned off by Romney's Bain history. Why do you think he stopped talking about it?
The 47% video confirmed what they already believed. If team Obama hadn't laid the groundwork, it wouldn't have been as damaging.
Of course Romney's job right now is to make Obama look incompetant and attack job growth, but it's Obama's job to step up to the plate and prove him wrong.
IIt's Rock-em Sock-em Robots time, Obama needs to be tough.
And will we see this clip all over the news outlets tonight? Otherwise it's a lost opportunity.
Romney claim's he know's how the private sector work's.Hell I can tell you that in one word.GREED!When he say's he'll cut tax's on the middle class,do'nt forget he said he consider's $250k per year the middle class.The same people that are considered in the top 5%,but I guess when you are making $20 millioion a year,you would consider them middle class maybe even lower middle class.He say's the 47% do not pay federal income tax which be true,BUT,the lion's share of these people pay federal income tax's during each year.They may get the money back the following year through the child tax credit etc.but to say they pay no federal income tax is a half truth at best.
Fantasia was a hit.People visit Disney World in droves. Reality TV is popular even though it is unreal.
My point? Mitt should be a big hit since he spins lies into a world of make believe that encompasses all the dreams of all the crazies in the world.
AND the Romney campaign is NOW 'floating' the argument that it will take THEM 3 years to see progress on THEIR agenda...see Orrin Hatch this weekend. Hypocrites.
The right wing is mad at President Obama because they have concerns about the deficit, government spending, jobs going overseas and where he was born. They are saying things like “We want America back” or “Obama doesn’t understand America.” This anger is what gave birth to the Tea Party, but from where I stand it looks more like the rebirth of the Dixiecrats. This is America and in America we have the right to get mad and to voice our displeasure with the way our government is being run.
So why didn’t the right wing and Tea Party get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President?
Or
When Dick Cheney allowed officials from the energy companies to dictate energy policy and push us to invade Iraq?
Or
When the Bush Administration’s lies result in America illegally invading a country that posed no threat to us what-so-ever?
Or
When that illegal invasion cost America over 4,000 of its Sons and daughters and 800 billion dollars?
Or
When Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined?
Or
When Bush agreed with outsourcing policies that shipped six million American jobs out of the country?
Or
When Bush admitted not being that concerned about catching Bin Laden?
Or
When Bush’s policies created a 10 trillion dollar deficit?
Or
When we saw the horrible conditions our veterans were subjected to at Walter Reed?
Or
When the Bush Administration let three days go by before they delivered water to the Katrina victims in New Orleans?
Or
When over 200,000 U.S. citizens lost their lives because they didn’t have health insurance?
Or
When the lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused U.S. citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement and home values?
NONE OF THAT MADE THEM MAD; but now that a black man is President and wants to give every American the right to see a doctor when he or she gets sick, they get mad.
Hi Rachel,
Did you notice the similiarity between Romney's bullying of his high school classmate and the aggressive bullying of Jim Lehrer? This is the true Romney!
Please styop asking Mitt Romney what loopholes he intends to close. Mitt Romney is only interested in becoming a one term President , the bottom line is if he is elected he will hv to govern , the Republican Party is split whichever way he governs the other side will not come out for him in 2016. Mitt Romney is a smart man he knows this his only goal is to become President then the country will get another change . We need stability !!!! How selfish is Mitt Romney to do this!!!!!!! Well i guess it doesnt matter to him he is filthy rich, will have reached his ultimate goal and now can take all his money and spend the rest of his life with his grandkids having achied his ultimate goal in life. This falls right in line with how he has conducted hisself his whole career whether it be at Bain or the FOUR years he spent as govenor. CHRIS MATTHEWS IS COORECT WHEN HE ASKS. WHY DOES THIS MAN WANT TO BE PRESIDENT????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
why does Romney want to be president? He wants to be president because Obama has failed in bringing the economy back, his foreign policy has failed, and his so called "getting the deficit cut in half" has failed. The deficit has risen every year he has been in office!! I like Obama as a person, he's a nice guy, but he does not know how to fix problems. Take a macroeconomics course and you might be surprised to find out that if you raise taxes on businesses, the economy shrinks and less tax revenue is brought in. Why? Because businesses will let go of employees, meaning more unemployment, and less taxes being payed to the government. Also would mean more jobless benefits going out to people, raising the debt. Another think democrats probably don't understand is that US corporation pay the HIGHEST tax rate in the WORLD! So why on earth would you want to raise it some more? anyway, sure the stock market has recovered, which is ironic because Obama said he was going to work for the middle class and they are still suffering. Romney will bring the middle class back to work, creating jobs by lowering taxes on the small businesses, allowing them to hire more workers, which also means those workers will be paying TAXES to the government; all without raising taxes on anyone!! Foreign policy, I mean the crisis in Syria has gone long enough, Israel and Iran are at odds and all obama does is sit and wait for something serious to happen. Its time America stood up for its allies again!! and the debt- well its still higher than when he took office, which he said he would cut in half. Yea politicians never complete what they always say and this is a hard one, but he still gave little effort to lower the debt. Too big promises to keep!! Hope isn't a policy for America, its a dream that everyone has. Action isn't a dream, action is real, action is good!! Vote Romney to be America's comeback team!!