The economy produced a "paltry" 32,000 jobs last month--way below expectations. 32,000 jobs is about 650 jobs per state. If a state has about 10 counties, that's about 70 jobs per county.

This obviously bad news for Bush' re-election team even though they are focusing on the fact that the unemployment rate went down by 0.01% and touting what they call a historically low unemployment rate. The problem for the administration is that they have attacked John Kerry aggressively for being "pessimistic" about the economy and Bush has pushed an "optimistic" economy that is "turning the corner." Now with numbers like this, Bush has to let people know that he feels their pain without acknowledging that the economy is not revving up like he was proclaiming.

A bad economy is good for no one and I think it is worse that we have a president who is simply trying to talk it away. This is what his father did and the rest is history.

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I just listened to Kerry on the campaign trail somewhere in Missouri on a family farm. He and John Edwards were taking questions after talking about their energy plan. It is such a world of difference to listen to Kerry at these events and President Bush at campaign events. Acknowleding my bias, Kerry just sounds more like a competent adult and Bush uses phrases like "low bogitry of expectations" and pauses and looks around like he wants you to clap for him for using such a phrase.

Kerry's strengths lie in these town hall style meetings. It is here that he shows off his competence and incredible command of the issues. In these settings, you get the real deal and see that the stump speech is not just a script, he gets into some detail at these townhall meetings. These townhall meetings were what propelled Kerry to victory in Iowa, because when he talks and dialogs, you realize that he just plain makes sense. The 30 second sound byte is not Kerry's forte, but a dialog is. Bush is generally stuck without a script and resorts to trite phrases, not just because of his lack of facility with the language, but because he just isn't a leader who understands what's going on. I hope Kerry keeps up the townhall meetings.