The ugly, unvarnished Obama jobs record -- Unemployment dropped lower because workers dropped out -- By Donald Lambro, The Washington Times

Liberal pundits are gushing over last week's job report, hoping it will give President Obama and his fellow Democrats the political boost they need to avoid yet another devastating defeat in the midterm elections.

After nearly 5 years of a job-challenged, sluggish economy that all but stopped growing in the past three months, they're hailing the Labor Department report as the long-awaited antidote to the Democrats' deepening political troubles.

"If they aren't exactly popping champagne corks over at the White House, at the very least there's surely a sigh of relief, and a renewed hope" that Democrats might head into November with a better narrative about the economy," writes blogger Paul Waldman at The Washington Post.

"For Democrats desperately in search of a way to change the national political environment in advance of the November election, the surprisingly strong April jobs report represents a ray of light," cheers the newspaper's election tracker, Chris Cillizza.

Then there's this analysis from The Washington Post's chief political reporter, Dan Balz: "Friday's jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested that the economy roared into a different gear last month, adding 288,888 jobs."

The Obama economy "roaring"? Even a cursory review of the job numbers revealed that beneath the statistics, this report showed fewer people were working, not more. This is an economy struggling on many levels, one that Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen says is still stuck in a recovery and will likely remain so for the next year or more.

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