People who know David Axelrod say he’s in a state of panic, and it’s only partly over President Obama’s dismal debate performance against Mitt Romney last week. The bigger worry for the president’s top political guru is the economy, and Obama’s utter inability to spin a positive tale about it.

You saw the same concern in the cheering on the left over last week’s unemployment number — finally dipping below 8 percent for the first time in almost four years. The problem is, people vote on the evidence of what they see around them, not on numbers from Washington — and the federal jobs figures are always a weak reflection of reality.

Worse, for Obama and the nation, better indicators of the economy’s health suggest things are headed down, not up. In other words, nearly four years of Obamanomics is pushing us back into the ditch.

First off, the jobless stats: The fact is, the government doesn’t have data good enough to authoritatively tell us how many people were looking for work last month; these numbers are always revised in later reports.

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