David Axelrod, You Dunce.

So David Axelrod (AKA Axleturf, AKA @davidaxelrod) and Obama's "Truth Team" (@truthteam2012) have been trying to make hay over Mitt Romney's terrible, terrible jobs and economic record in Massachusetts as Governor.  Wait, did I say terrible?  I meant, "On the good side of mediocre."  See, as Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney presided over a roughly 4.7% Unemployment rate.  During the boom years of George Bush's term, MA had one of the worst job creation records in the nation- but jobs were, indeed being created. 

Yesterday, David Axelrod attempted a bit of a power play.  He went to the Boston State House to make his case about how terrible Mitt Romney was.  He chose... poorly.

First, off, a fair number of Romney Supporters decided to perform a live-action version of the Twitter hash-tag hijackings which have become so common.  Then, he committed the ultimate sin of public speaking: he addressed the hecklers.  This is public speaking 101, people.  The most you do to acknowledge a heckler- even a group of them- is to say something flippant and move on.  George Bush was famous for that smile (almost a smirk) and a quick, "I love freedom of speech," when someone in a crowd heckled him.  That was a good reaction.  David Axelrod, who is supposed to be some kind of political genius, not only addressed the crowd, but he allowed them to hijack his speech for a few moments. 

Fail.

To rub salt in the wound, today the BLS came out with May's preliminary Jobs numbers.  To call them a disaster is to be over kind.  Only 69,000 non-farm jobs created.  We need roughly 300,000 just to keep up with population growth.  The "official" unemployment rate was reported as ticking up to 8.2%, which means that real unemployment is still somewhere between 11 & 14 percent.  Worse are the numbers that won't get coverage.  The already anemic growth in April was also revised down- from 115K to 77K.  March, similarly, was re-revised down (that's two downward revisions for March, for the record) to 143K.

Pro-Tip Mr. Axelrod:  if you're going to try to use the economy as a weapon against your opposition, it helps to have a healthy economy first.