The media would like you to believe that the big story of the day is alleged disorder within the Romney campaign. The problem, as HotAir's Ed Morrissey points out, is that the press hasn't yet settled on a narrative about what the problem actually is.
In the meantime, Jay Cost catalogs the stories that have been conveniently overlooked by the myopic focus on Romney and his campaign:
Gas prices increased on average by $0.04, despite the end of the summer driving season. With Brent crude prices remaining elevated, gas prices are probably not going to come down any time soon.
-The Consumer Price Index increased by 0.6 percent month-over-month. This is an extremely large jump, built mostly around increased energy prices.
-Retail sales, excluding gas and cars, were flat.
-Manufacturing production fell by more than 1 percent last month alone, and capacity utilization dropped by 1 point.
-The jobs report from August was an absolute misery.
-Overall, the economy is so anemic that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has initiated an unprecedented third round of quantitative easing, this one open-ended.
Put simply: This economy is already weak and appears to be getting weaker.
Now the press can continue to insist that President Obama has all-but-got the election in the bag. But here are two small but revealing statistics:
(1) Richard Rasmussen tweets that 57% of Americans think we are in a recession.
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(2) According to the Chicago Tribune, voter registrations in Florida look like this:
11,365 people registered as Democratic voters in the 13 months that ended at the end of August, compared with an average of 209,425 for the same periods before the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.
Meanwhile, 128,039 Republicans have registered in the state over the past 13 months, up from an average of 103,555 in the same period in 2004 and 2008,
Sources:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/17/media-having-a-little-narrative-problem-today/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-how-media-misrepresents-race_652455.html
https://twitter.com/RasmussenPoll
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