(Newser)
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Despite all the pageantry in Charlotte, Robert Reich says the week's biggest political story will arrive after all the balloons have popped: That would be Friday's jobs report, the first of three remaining before the election, he writes at the Christian Science Monitor. Even though it's just a "crude approximation" of the situation from an economist's point of view, the report could easily give either President Obama or Mitt Romney a boost. Reich can't recall a race when these numbers "were as politically significant."
At Politico, Ben White quotes a Wall Street analyst with a similar sentiment regarding Obama and the convention: “If the number is good Friday, it doubles his bounce. Maybe triples it. If it comes in really low, it could extinguish it. I don't think there's ever been a more important jobs number, politically, than this one.” Of course, if the rate stays at 8.3% and the job gains come in as expected—Reuters has the number at 125,000—it could all be a wash.
