The Left seems anxious to talk about immigration, climate change and energy policy, gun control, paid leave mandates… just about anything other than the economy. 

There’s a good reason why.  Despite politicians’ and the left-leaning media’s endless attempts to convince Americans that the economy is better than it is—so every bad jobs report is “unexpected” and any slight evidence of progress is trumpeted—Americans know that there is something fundamentally wrong with what was once known as the great American jobs machine.

Rumors is that the President isn’t going to leave himself open to charges that he is ignoring the big “jobs” issue, but will rather make that the centerpiece of tonight’s address.  It’s hard to imagine what will come out of that, other than more of the same-old-same-old government “investment” in infrastructure projects and “green energy” initiatives that as we’ve seen during the first term are really little more than mechanisms for politicians to funnel taxpayer money to their friends.     

I’m betting that the President will talk mostly about liberal priorities like climate change, immigration reform and more workplace regulations, but will just frame those discussions as though they are in themselves the real key to solving our jobs problem.  We’ll see how that goes. 

Americans should recall, however, that this was one of the many ways that ObamaCare was sold to the American people—as a way to create hundreds of thousands of jobs by freeing businesses from the burden of health insurance costs so that they could begin hiring again.  Ask all the workers who today find their hours being cut, and the millions of others who are losing employer-provided coverage all together, how that’s worked out.   ObamaCare obviously hasn’t been the great employment boon that the Left promised, and is instead another reason why our economy remains stalled—and why the future looks even more uncertain, as American companies, investors, as well as the rest of the world wonders how long America can ignore its big debt problem, which is made worse, not better, by this latest government entitlement program.

President Obama can give a good speech and I’m sure he will do everything he can tonight to convince Americans that the state of our union is strong…or at least stronger than it was 4 years ago.  Yet Americans have heard this before, and may be learning to trust their own lying eyes instead of the President’s words.