Waukesha, Wisc.

Heading into the second, and last, Wisconsin gubernatorial recall debate Thursday night, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett is finding it increasingly difficult to make a substantive public policy argument against Governor Scott Walker. During last Friday’s debate, Barrett mostly ignored Walker’s once controversial (now popular) budget reforms and mainly focused his attacks on Walker’s character and just one policy issue: jobs.

Barrett said Wisconsin had lost more jobs than any other state in the country over the past year, according to a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS survey had already been disproven by a more reliable report, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, that showed the state actually gained more than 20,000 jobs, as well as an extremely persuasive argument from the state’s top economist about how the state is gaining jobs. But Barrett has said Walker “cooked the books” and that it would be foolish to believe the positive jobs numbers until they were “verified” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.