President Barack Hussein Obama (Peace be unto him), on his ninth visit to Ohio and third to Columbus, tried to convince Americans in a backyard discussion that, despite the worst economy that most of us have seen in our lifetimes, his policies have actually got America on the right track.

According to Gallup, Scooter’s poll numbers, as of yesterday, break down thusly:

JOB APPROVAL       APPROVE  41%     DISAPPROVE  52%

U.S.  WORKFORCE    UNDEREMPLOYED  18.1%    EMPLOYED 81.9%

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS  EXCELLENT/GOOD  9% POOR 48%

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK  GETTING BETTER  32% GETTING WORSE  61%

With these kind of numbers hanging over his head, Obama returned to Ohio, a battleground state he won handily in 2008, to try to, as he said about Republicans,  bamboozle voters by saying that his economic policies are beginning to pay dividends in the form of new jobs and to plead with Democrats to turn back an expected GOP juggernaut at the Nov. 2 midterm election.

Obama told a group of about 40 in the backyard of Rhonda and Joe Weithman’s home, a Cape Cod on quiet E. Kanawha Avenue in Clintonville:

Slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction. We’re on the right track.

Hey, Scooter, that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

The president had to admit that times remain tough. Ohio’s unemployment rate of 10.5 percent is a full percentage point above the national rate.  Obama said:

We’ve made progress, but let’s face it, the progress hasn’t been fast enough.

As usual,Obama blamed Boooosh for  the economy, whining about how bad it was when he took office, saying it “really suffered a big trauma” and comparing the recovery to improving from an illness by getting “a little bit stronger each day.”

Later, at a Downtown luncheon fundraiser for Gov. Ted Strickland and the Ohio Democratic Party, Obama continued to blame Boooosh saying that the recession already had swept away 8 million jobs before “we had any opportunity to put in our economic policies.” His policies: the $787 billion stimulus package, health-care overhaul, domestic auto industry bailout and tighter regulations on Wall Street are helping to rebuild the economy, Obama said.

Scooter told 700 of the cheering faithful at the fundraiser in the Athenaeum:

After 18 months, I have never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction.

And, every day, he goes outside to feed the unicorn grazing on the South Law of the White House.

Obama’s visit, particularly his gloves-off rebuke of congressional Republicans : “This year, their slogan is, ‘No we can’t'”, was intended to boost the spirits of local Democrat politicians who dominate statewide offices and are feeling voters’ wrath against incumbents.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman called the speech “a motivator” for the state’s Democratic base:

It had some new energy for the party and showed how far we’ve come in a relatively short time, and going back to where we were is just not an option acceptable to Ohio.

Then he went and drank another glass of Kool-aid.

Scooter’s theme of remember the past so we don’t relive it was woven through every speech delivered at the fundraiser by members of the statewide Democratic ticket, who warned those attending that electing Republicans would mean resurrecting the policies that ignited the recession.

Sen. Sherrod Brown said after the fundraiser:

This is going to be a hard year, as we know.  We’ve got to make the contrast between what we are doing versus what they (Republicans) did, and what they did is what they want to do again.

Obama received a few chuckles when he reiterated a story he’s been making at every campaign, err, fund-raising, stop:  saying Republicans “want the keys back” after putting the economy in the ditch:

When you want your car to go forward, what do you do?  You put it into ‘D.’ When you want it going backwards, what do you do? You put it into ‘R.’

Auditor Mary Taylor, the running mate of John Kasich, Strickland’s GOP challenger, said in a conference call that jobs are the only issue in Ohio, and that both Strickland and Obama have failed to create them.

The president has a lot to answer for because more than 130,000 jobs have been lost in Ohio since February 2009, when the president’s ‘stimulus’ spending bill became law and helped explode the national debt to $13 trillion.

Obama arrived at the Weithmans’ home around 10:30 a.m. and spent about 15 minutes trying to bamboozle the family at their kitchen table about how the federal stimulus bill helped them.  Rhonda was able to maintain the family’s health insurance after losing her job last year, and the small architectural firm Joe runs was able to keep two employees with a project funded in part by stimulus funds.

Scooter then pontificated for nearly an hour in the backyard, taking nine questions from guests seated on a semi-circle of picnic tables in front of the few stalks of corn in the family vegetable garden.

The questions included whether Social Security would be privatized (Obama said not as long as he is president), as well as concerns about health care, education and pensions.

When a reporter had the temerity to ask a question after the “backyard bash” about whether Scooter has any regrets about his controversial comments about a proposed mosque at Ground Zero in New York City, the president paused for a picture (of course) and then answered:

The answer is “no regrets.”

The president kept the mood informal, telling the guests to ignore the throngs of photographers standing on risers and tried to schmooze with the “little people”, asking Columbus firefighter Joe Richard:

Did you used to play for Ohio State, man? You look like we could put you on the line right now.

Obama also said the Weithmans “made me be the ‘O'” in an O-H-I-O for a keepsake photo.  How droll.

The neighborhood was abuzz with curiosity as people gathered outside the police barricades to watch the hubbub before the president arrived on their street.

Although she was glad to have the president visit her neighborhood, Mirka Biggs, 60, a Republican who lives a street over from the Weithmans, said she’s skeptical about where the job market is headed:

The economy is not going right.

As the Gallup poll numbers that I posted earlier show, the majority of Americans feel the same way that Ms. Biggs does.  Unfortunately for Obama and the Democrats, with Midterm Elections a little more than three months away, all the flowery rhetoric and Boooosh-blaming in the world will not be able to rescue them from the consequences of  their failed Economic Policies.