Obama versus Boehner on jobs speech date: Who's the adult?

“I do think this is a really big debate and I think the White House was out of bounds,” said Democratic strategist James Carville Thursday on “Good Morning America”.

(Maybe Carville is being magnanimous here. But there are also Democratic analysts who think it’s best for Obama to get as many voters as possible to watch GOP debates, so they can see Rick Perry before he has to tone down his rhetoric for the general election.)

Third, does anybody think jobs-related legislation will actually pass Congress in the months ahead? It doesn’t seem likely.

To the right, Obama is unlikely to propose anything that would actually help. The stimulus plan didn’t lead to long-term job growth, they say. Nor did health-care reform.

“Every time the president has pivoted to jobs a funny thing has happened – we’ve wound up losing more jobs. How many mulligans will we give our golfer-in-chief?” wrote Erick Erickson, editor of the conservative blog RedState, on Thursday.

To the left, Republicans in Congress have no intention of helping Obama pass a bill because the real issue is the coming election, not unemployment.

“If it wasn’t already clear that Republicans in Congress have no intention of working with the White House on further help for the jobless, it’s pretty clear now,” writes Wonkbook blogger Ezra Klein in the Washington Post.

One last note: Sept. 8 isn’t exactly a clear date either, as far as competition for voter eyeballs is concerned. That’s the night the NFL season starts. The last two defending Super Bowl champions, the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints, meet at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field on that day at 8:30 PM.

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