>>> it is friday july 6th , 2012 , i'm chuck todd . the "daily rundown" starts right now. the jobs report gives more pressure on the presidential election . this month 80,000 jobs added in june leaving the unemployment number stuck at 8.2 making the second quarter of 2012 the weakest in terms of jobs added in two years. after a brief dip in april the unemployment rate has not moved at all, but the bad news is hiring with 80,000 new jobs with adjustments to april and may and you can see 225,000 jobs were added in the last three months combined, and that is less than the total number of jobs added in february alone. on average 226,000 jobs were added each month in the first quarter. the second quarter average just about 75,000. down by more than 2/3. the jobs report essentially means a political status quo of sorts, but it is bad enough to give romney some breathing room from a bad week. yesterday the hand wringing about romney 's campaign continued after a brutal editorial from the " wall street journal " followed up be i the weekly standard 's bill crystal comparing romney to quote "losing candidates from massachusetts" in a piece titled "can dukakis carry romney " and a "prevent defense in the second quarter when you are not ahead is a daubous strategy, and the maniacal belief that the economy and only the economy is an annoying tick to a self-delusion." a chance that the romney branch is trying to throw an olive branch to the critics, a few selective reports this morning. one the washington post notes that romney will bolster his communications and messaging team, and that some republicans who have been advising romney behind the scenes may take on more public roles and add tv time, but the "post" reports that there are no plans to alter romney 's core team of boston advisers and unclear how the changes are, but he is clearly wanting to offer something to the critics to calm them down, and one of the things is the june fund-raising hall with over $100 million. and that is combined with the romney victory fund . and in is combined with a trip for the summer and with his already trip to the olympics and his recently announced trip to israel, and it would start out in reno, nevada, where he would make a big foreign policy speech there and go to great britain and travel to israel and then back the europe to visit both germany and poland. the romney campaign had considered a stop in afghanistan, but that is now unlikely, because the speculation about this trip is one more piece of evidence that romney may not announce the vp pick until after that trip and after the olympics, and the timing would seem odd if they did it before. remember, we are dealing with about a two-week window before he would take off on that trip. the president will address the jobs numbers when he stops in poland, ohio, later this morning and the second day of what the campaign is calling the betting on america bus tour. it also takes him to boardman, ohio, south of youngstown, and then wraps up the afternoon in carnegie mellon in pennsylvania. and the drive to win the president is making an unsubtle plan to go after middle class workers and he is targeting romney as out-sourcer.
>> governor romney said we should just let detroit go bankrupt. i refuse to turn my back on communities like this one. i was betting on the american worker. governor romney 's experience has been in owning companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing. my experience has been in saving the american auto industry .
>> and in an interview with nbc cincinnati affiliate wlwt, the president dialed up the rhetoric on the health care mandate and went right at romney calling him a flip-flopper.
>> the fact that a whole bunch of republicans in washington sudd suddenly said this is a tax, for six years he said it wasn't, and now he is suddenly reversed himself and so the question becomes, are you doing that because of politics, are you abandoning a principle that you fought for, for six years simply because you are getting pressure for two days?
>> the romney campaign responded in a statement this morning saying, quote, president obama is right, what you say as president matters and he told the american people that it is not a tax and then sent the lawyers to the supreme court to insist it is a tax and now insisting again it is not a tax. in another interview this one with columbus affiliate wcmh the president was asked how he would respond to governors like john kasich who said they will use medicaid funds to expand coverage.
>> what is going to happen and we saw it when medicare first started, a lot of times politics gets in the way of common sense. so, there are a lot of republican governors who feel pressure from, you know, rush limbaugh and members of congress not to implement and so they think it is bad politics, and over time though, when they see that more and more people in states that do implement are getting a better deal on the health insurance and the costs are going down and fewer people are uninsured and over time what will happen is that the politics fade fades away and this thing gets impleme implemented.
>> this trip is all about trying to connect with voters who do not have much of an affinity for the president and in a series of off of the record stops, the president bought a cheeseburger and fries at a diner and had some corn and sipped beer at ziggy's.
>> i had a beer in amherst at ziggys so i'm feeling good.
>> and that was a miller lite on tap and bud light in the bottle and the president spoke off of the cuff and dropped the tell prompter.
>> i don't care how much the other side spends, you cannot be stopped once you have decided what is right and what is true.
>> in the last election i told people, i'm not a perfect man. i certainly wasn't going to be a perfect president. but i said, i'd always tell you what i thought and i'd always tell you where i stood.
>> anybody else getting w flashbacks on 2004 on that line? it is a familiar line. all right. back to the big story of the morning and the spring slowdown continues in the summer and the numbers of june caps off one of the weakest quarters of the year, and now joining us is mark zandi and given the slowdown from may to june, any wonder to have a slowdown in hiring again in june or worse than you expected?
>> well, i was disappointed, because it is not enough and it is not enough to bring down the unemployment and when you have 8.2 unemployment rate , it is uncomfortable. we are growing, but not fast enough to make anyone feel good about what is going on.
>> one of the things that we had hard about a couple of weeks ago, slowdown in manufacturing. breakdown the report for me a little bit, what did you see in it that gives you any glimmer of hope for growth and what did you see in it that has you nervous that this sort of status quo slowdown is going to continue.
>> well, you look in the details and it is odd. i think that is why there are some glimmers of hope. we saw a decline of employment in retailing which is incredibly unusual and that is not the reality of retail. and construction was zero after few months of declines, but it is not con ssistent with the pickup of construction and leisure and hospitality and tourism, and that is incredibly weak, so is some of the numbers if you look at the details don't seem to add up with what is going on in the industry, so i am hopeful when the data gets in the numbers will look better, but the reality with the caveats, we are still not growing fast enough.
>> and there has always been a lot of speculation that a lot of businesses are not doing any hiring right now as they wait for the results of the election. is that really the case? is that really how the american business community operates?
>> well, some truth to that. what is going on is that everyone is incredibly nervous of what we went through and the nightmare of the recession is deeply embedded in people's thinking so if anything goes off a little bit, they pull back and not that they layoff worker, because that is a recession, but they stop hiring. i don't know if it is the election, but the confluence of thing, and what is going on in europe and all of that and the fiscal cliff that is coming and the fiscal decisions that we have to make. and it is all of these things that make business people incredibly nervous and again, they don't layoff, but they just stop hiring and that is how we get the tepid job numbers.
>> all right. looking ahead to the next couple of months the rest of the summer, and summer has been at some point there is an expectation that you would see some summer hiring pickup, and you expect that?
>> yes, i do. that is captured in the data and the seasonal adjustment , and just because you get a pickup of the seasonal numbers, will not affect the numbers per se . but the underlying job growth in te k the economy is better than this and we will get better fum numbnum -- numbers, but chuck, i have been overly optimistic for the last four months, so take it with a grain of salt.
>> governor romney said we should just let detroit go bankrupt. i refuse to turn my back on communities like this one. i was betting on the american worker. governor romney 's experience has been in owning companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing. my experience has been in saving the american auto industry .
>> and in an interview with nbc cincinnati affiliate wlwt, the president dialed up the rhetoric on the health care mandate and went right at romney calling him a flip-flopper.
>> the fact that a whole bunch of republicans in washington sudd suddenly said this is a tax, for six years he said it wasn't, and now he is suddenly reversed himself and so the question becomes, are you doing that because of politics, are you abandoning a principle that you fought for, for six years simply because you are getting pressure for two days?
>> the romney campaign responded in a statement this morning saying, quote, president obama is right, what you say as president matters and he told the american people that it is not a tax and then sent the lawyers to the supreme court to insist it is a tax and now insisting again it is not a tax. in another interview this one with columbus affiliate wcmh the president was asked how he would respond to governors like john kasich who said they will use medicaid funds to expand coverage.
>> what is going to happen and we saw it when medicare first started, a lot of times politics gets in the way of common sense. so, there are a lot of republican governors who feel pressure from, you know, rush limbaugh and members of congress not to implement and so they think it is bad politics, and over time though, when they see that more and more people in states that do implement are getting a better deal on the health insurance and the costs are going down and fewer people are uninsured and over time what will happen is that the politics fade fades away and this thing gets impleme implemented.
>> this trip is all about trying to connect with voters who do not have much of an affinity for the president and in a series of off of the record stops, the president bought a cheeseburger and fries at a diner and had some corn and sipped beer at ziggy's.
>> i had a beer in amherst at ziggys so i'm feeling good.
>> and that was a miller lite on tap and bud light in the bottle and the president spoke off of the cuff and dropped the tell prompter.
>> i don't care how much the other side spends, you cannot be stopped once you have decided what is right and what is true.
>> in the last election i told people, i'm not a perfect man. i certainly wasn't going to be a perfect president. but i said, i'd always tell you what i thought and i'd always tell you where i stood.
>> anybody else getting w flashbacks on 2004 on that line? it is a familiar line. all right. back to the big story of the morning and the spring slowdown continues in the summer and the numbers of june caps off one of the weakest quarters of the year, and now joining us is mark zandi and given the slowdown from may to june, any wonder to have a slowdown in hiring again in june or worse than you expected?
>> well, i was disappointed, because it is not enough and it is not enough to bring down the unemployment and when you have 8.2 unemployment rate , it is uncomfortable. we are growing, but not fast enough to make anyone feel good about what is going on.
>> one of the things that we had hard about a couple of weeks ago, slowdown in manufacturing. breakdown the report for me a little bit, what did you see in it that gives you any glimmer of hope for growth and what did you see in it that has you nervous that this sort of status quo slowdown is going to continue.
>> well, you look in the details and it is odd. i think that is why there are some glimmers of hope. we saw a decline of employment in retailing which is incredibly unusual and that is not the reality of retail. and construction was zero after few months of declines, but it is not con ssistent with the pickup of construction and leisure and hospitality and tourism, and that is incredibly weak, so is some of the numbers if you look at the details don't seem to add up with what is going on in the industry, so i am hopeful when the data gets in the numbers will look better, but the reality with the caveats, we are still not growing fast enough.
>> and there has always been a lot of speculation that a lot of businesses are not doing any hiring right now as they wait for the results of the election. is that really the case? is that really how the american business community operates?
>> well, some truth to that. what is going on is that everyone is incredibly nervous of what we went through and the nightmare of the recession is deeply embedded in people's thinking so if anything goes off a little bit, they pull back and not that they layoff worker, because that is a recession, but they stop hiring. i don't know if it is the election, but the confluence of thing, and what is going on in europe and all of that and the fiscal cliff that is coming and the fiscal decisions that we have to make. and it is all of these things that make business people incredibly nervous and again, they don't layoff, but they just stop hiring and that is how we get the tepid job numbers.
>> all right. looking ahead to the next couple of months the rest of the summer, and summer has been at some point there is an expectation that you would see some summer hiring pickup, and you expect that?
>> yes, i do. that is captured in the data and the seasonal adjustment , and just because you get a pickup of the seasonal numbers, will not affect the numbers per se . but the underlying job growth in te k the economy is better than this and we will get better fum numbnum -- numbers, but chuck, i have been overly optimistic for the last four months, so take it with a grain of salt.