Appearing on “Face The Nation” this past Sunday, Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod laid out an important element of the president’s re-election campaign — forcing Republicans to pay for obstruction by pointing out that bad economic news is not something good, and that Republicans should watch before crowing about the political opportunities offered by slow growth:

We’ve had five hundred thousand manufacturing jobs created over this recovery. The best record in two decades, largely because of what the President did relative to the auto industry which the Congress and Governor Romney opposed. What was down was construction. What was down was education. The very things that the President has been trying to get the Congress to act on were the things that were down. … What we have learned is they will only act when the country demands action. Otherwise they’re going to sit on their hands and instead of high-fiving each other on days when there are bad news they should stop sitting on their hands and work on some of these answers.

Here’s a link to the video of Axelrod’s CBS appearance. Here’s a link to the transcript.