When Did Obama Say Jobs Weren't Coming Back?

I came across this post-mortem of the mid-term elections by Mary Mitchell of The Chicago Sun-Times.

It's the kind of typical left-wing blather one might expect. Mitchell calls anyone with the temerity to disagree with President Obama "a fear-monger."

But that's not what caught my attention. Take note of this passage:

I suppose that the president should not have revamped the health-care system, propped up the auto and banking industries and reined in Wall Street before coming up with a miracle that would have put the vast majority of those now unemployed back to work.

Apparently, two years ago, many of us were not listening.

During his campaign for the White House, Obama told Americans a cold-hearted truth that went in one ear and out the other:

Many of the jobs that have disappeared are not coming back.

Now as someone who paid close attention to Obama's campaign and attended one of his rallies in New Hampshire I cannot recall him ever telling his audiences that jobs have disappeared and aren't coming back. Frankly, I'm not sure how that would have fit into the whole hope and change narrative.

Obama certainly didn't say jobs weren't coming back when he announced he was running for President. Nor did Obama say jobs weren't coming back when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination. That, of course, was the speech he made with the Greek columns as a backdrop. Not only did Obama not tell the American electorate jobs weren't coming back he spoke about investing $150 billion in affordable, renewable energy over the following decade. Obama called his plan "an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

If none of us were listening to Barack Obama's dire warnings about jobs it is because he never gave them. So I don't know what Mary Mitchell speaks of when she evokes Obama as this cautious, sober figure he's never been.