Dylan Matthews fact-checks Deval Patrick attack lines against Romney. Yglesias, meanwhile, argues that state performance is a poor metric for administrative success:
The real truth, as noted in this great Andrew Gelman post from five years ago, is that there isn't that much change over time in states' economic well-being. All things considered the best predictor of how rich a state was in 2000 was simply how rich it was in 1929…. Massachusetts and Connecticut have always been rich and Arkansas and Mississippi have always been poor.
But Megan Woolhouse and Michael Rezendes argue that the bursting of the tech bubble – Massachusetts' "most important industry" – put the state economy roughly in the same shape as the national economy that Obama inherited:
On the campaign trail in 2002, Romney promised a jobs creation program “second to none in the history of the state,” pledging to use his corporate connections to lure chief executives across America to Massachusetts. The results fell far short of the promise. During Romney’s four years in office, the state added a net 31,000 jobs, a growth rate of less than 1 percent compared to 5 percent nationally during the same period. State unemployment fell to 4.7 percent from a peak of 6 percent, but remained above the US average, then 4.4 percent. Meanwhile, as the state recovery lagged other parts of the country, a net 233,000 people — 3.5 percent of the population — left the state, many seeking jobs elsewhere.
The Dish 