Obama Still on the Brink

Dick Morris analyzes just how bad things are for the President. To show just how short term any bounce from the SOTU is, all you need to know is that another economic number came out this morning.

The weekly first time jobless claims came out and this week they were at 470,000. That number is better than it was at the beginning of his presidency but it's been choppy throughout. The four week average is roughly where it was in December. The monthly employment numbers come out a week from today. Obama's Presidency has become enslaved to that number.

That was always going to happen. Obama came in during a time of economic upheavel and his presidency was going to be judged by how the economy improved. Last month, the economy lost about 80 thousand jobs. The number will be somewhere near there this month. If its worse than last month, that will put Obama's presidency in even more jeopardy.

That's because a year in it would be unclear if things are improving. We'd have an awful jobs picture and getting more awful. At this point, there's nothing that Obama can say. Everything will ultimately depend on how jobs look come November.

We're about ten months away. The jobs picture looks bad, it may be getting worse, and it's almost certain to look awful come November. In the meantime, all we have to show for our trouble is a mountain of debt and a failed health care bill.

There's the rub. It matters little what Obama said last night. We can hyperanalyze every so called fact but they matter little. Today's first time jobless claims are much more relevant than the speech. The fact is that the economy is in much worse shape than Obama and the administration said it would be. There's little they can do to change that now.

Obama is married to a stimulus that isn't merely perceived to not work but is simply not working. That's his signature policy. Because that policy failed, he'll not be able to pass anything else. So, the Democrats are in fact looking at November with a record of a mountain of debt, double digit unemployment, and no other accomplishments to speak of. There's nothing they can do to change that.