the president failed. that s no surprise. the president obviously hasn t failed. he s done a tremendous amount of progress and we want to make sure we ve got four more years of continuing that progress so we can get to where we all want to be. joy, the polling turnaround here is going to have to happen at a point in the calendar where it can hold. if romney is going to turn this around, when does the clock start to run out? well, i mean, the problem for mitt romney is that it appears that americans have already factored in their negative attitudes towards the economy. i think they re counting on jobs reports. that every time there s a negatives job report, there will be one right before the election, that will be his opportunity. but that hasn t worked. people already have a sour attitude towards the economy. and they still prefer barack obama to mitt romney. it s still a choice, not just a referendum. so i think probably what they re counting on is the convention. when he can sort
by the u.s. athletes. it was, jonathan, before i get to those, i want to point out in the open, for the first time in the history of way too early, go ahead, girl, i have not said that on the show. so thank you. we did have gabby douglas, the 16-year-old gymnast winning gold. phelps versus lochte going head to head for the second time in the pool. and if you like the united states crushing the hopes and dreams of helpless african nations you ll love what the dream team did to nigeria, i ll have that for you later. gabby douglas is cousin to friend of mine. she is amazing. we ll see you in a bit. new economic numbers will dominate another day on the presidential trail, with july s jobs reports due out less than an hour from now. mitt romney pointed to his time in massachusetts.
okay. so it s an interesting week. a lot of talk about taxes. neither issue it looks like will be resolved any time soon. we don t know if or when governor romney will release more tax returns. he says he will. that date to be determined. the fight over middle class tax cuts not going to end any time soon either. that s right. the way to look at the totality of the week is that mitt romney found himself on the defensive whether on his own tax records or that the president and the obama campaign really took the offensive trying to make a battle over these bush tax cuts. when the week began, i think we were all talking we thought the issue would be about friday s disappointing jobs reports. as you see the obama campaign and the white house trying to change the subject and they were effective. this thing goes up and down week to week and we ll probably see the romney campaign on the offensive next week. when you look at the past five days, you have seen the campaign on their heels.
that if you can seriously define your opponent if the in the early stages of a race, in an indelible way, you can gain advantage that you may never lose. i m not sure it s happening, but i think that s what they are trying to do. greta: it seems to me that the obama administration, or the campaign may be trying to frame governor romney a certain way. but underlying all of this, at least is the bad jobs reports. june was bad. we don t know about july or august or november. but no matter how much framing they do, you know, the jobs report is going to be king. i couldn t possibly agree with you more. that s the biggest political story of the hour and will continue to be as we get closer to the election. i might note this, while people s attention to the candidates and the campaigns may not be intense, this right now, this this season of the year has been in the past, the time and sentiment when the condition of the economy begins to harden. for example, in 1992 when bush
deadlocked at 47% among registered voters. this after some very weak new jobs numbers, landmark supreme court decisions on health care and immigration and millions spent on negative ads primarily. so where does the race go from here? with us now, associate editor of the hill , a.b. stoddard. thanks for joining us today.havy that these numbers would seem to me to be sort of advantage romney. i mean he fought a bruising primary against the other republican candidates in the spring. he has had less money to spend and he doesn t have the power of incumbency and yet he is tied with a sitting president in this latest poll. well, that s a good case to make. i think president obama after a series of disappointing jobs reports and 8.2% unemployment that looks like experts tell us are not going to change between now and the election day, i just think that president obama should probably be doing worse and