I of course defer to Robert Stein on whether there are silver linings in the unemployment numbers, but politically speaking, hitting a 26-year high in the unemployment rate is just bad for any administration. But I think this raises particular problems for Obama, because he’s going out there to sell a health-care bill that few believe is responsive to the immediate problems facing the economy. Rove made this point yesterday. “Mr. Obama’s problems are legion. To start with, the president is focusing on health care when the economy and jobs are nearly everyone’s top issue. Voters increasingly believe Mr. Obama took his eye off the ball.”

Obama’s defenders poo-poo this, saying that their version of healthcare reform is essential to fixing the economy. I think they’re wrong, but it’s not a crazy argument. The problem is that Obama hasn’t been able to sell that argument. He insisted at the dawn of his presidency that the financial crisis was somehow related to our health-care system’s problems and we couldn’t solve the former without dealing with the latter. That’s a silly argument (France and Britain have dream systems for progressives, they were hit just as hard or harder by the financial crisis) and it didn’t work. Now Obama is going in front of the nation to talk health care when the smart political thing would be to a) not give the speech at all or b) focus it on the economy in a way that is compelling for most Americans.