President Obama: America 'Not Better Off' Today than Four Years Ago

[Better Believe It]

President Obama: America 'Not Better Off' Today than Four Years Ago
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
October 3, 2011

Calling himself an "underdog," President Obama today said the faltering economy is a drag on his presidency and seriously impairing his chances of winning again in 2012.

"Absolutely," he said in response to a question from ABC News' George Stephanopoulos about whether the odds were against him come November 2012, given the economy. "I'm used to being the underdog. But at the end of the day people are going to ask -- who's got a vision?"

The American people, he conceded, are "not better off" than they were four years ago.

"The unemployment rate is way too high," he said of the 9 percent jobless rate, the highest in more than half a century.

Read the full article at:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-calls-underdog-2012-race-white-house/story?id=14656286


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President Obama and I Are in Full Agreement About 2012
By: Jon Walker
October 4, 2011

There are at least two areas where President Obama and I are in full agreement: his chances in the 2012 election and the current state of regular Americans’ economic lives.

Obama is the underdog for the simple reason that the American people are very clearly not better off than when Obama took office. That question, “are you better off than you were before the last election?” is normally not just the decisive question in American President elections but the decisive question in almost any democracy. In any democracy if the incumbent leader/party doesn’t improve the country for the broad electorate, the electorate normally chooses to remove them from power.

From a campaign messaging perspective, it is probably smart that Obama admits now he is likely going to lose. Since the American people are worse off, Obama can’t really run on his record, so his campaign is likely to be focused heavily on making the Republican alternative appear totally unacceptable.

By talking about how he could lose early in the cycle, Obama is laying the ground work to get voters to not just think about how bad things have been for the past three years, but also to think about what kind of President the Republican nominee will make. The more time voters spend worrying about the very real possibility of how Rick Perry would run the country

http://elections.firedoglake.com/2011/10/04/president-obama-and-i-are-in-full-agreement-about-2012/

[WI_DEM]

1. I think here Obama is selling himself short

While the economy isn't doing well what he inherited was an economy on the verge of collapse. He has to a certain extent stabilized things and while the recovery is so far jobless (though the unemployment rate did at one time exceed 10% and it's down to 9.1% now), the measures he did take, while incomplete and not nearly enough did eventually bring the economy out of recession and we have had several quarters of growth, though it has been sluggish growth.

[defendandprotect]

14. Where? Obama's approval rating is BELOW 40% --

Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval
Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval Each result is based on a three-day rolling ... Presidential Job Approval Center. Get Obama's latest approval ratings now and compare to
www.gallup.com/.../Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

Obama approval rating dips below 40%
President Obama hit a dubious milestone today, sinking below a 40% approval rating in the Gallup daily tracking poll. Only 39% of respondents approve of Obama's job ...
content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/08/... - Cached
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/08/obama-approval-rating-dips-below-40/1

[AtomicKitten]

26. He's at 42% today.

http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

Your first link is dead.

[defendandprotect]

27. ROFL: Disapprove 50% -- up 1 -- and look at the rest of it -- !!! Yikes!!

Us Employment --
Underemployed 18.2%
Unemployed 8.7%

Economic Conditions
Excellent/Good 10%
Poor 57% -- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Economic Outlook
Getting better 28%
Getting Worse 76% --- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Life Evaluation
Thriving 51%
Struggling 45%

Economic Confidence MINUS 54 down -3
Job Creation -- 10 - down -2



66 MILLION AMERICANS NOW LIVING IN POVERTY

50 MILLION WITH NO HEALTH CARE

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN -- !!

[AtomicKitten]

28. 42% > "BELOW 40%." Moving the goalposts doesn't change that fact. /nt

[defendandprotect]

31. You're correct by one day -- one day prior it was BELOW 40% -- !!

Nor does ignoring the other indications of the distress of the nation change

the fact of the reality of it --

45% of the nation is "struggling" --

50% disapprove -- !!

[stockholmer]

2. running a 'you have no choice as the alternative is even worse' campaign is pure, blind cynicism,and

is utterly unacceptable to ever affecting even a sliver of positive results for a nation state.

[Rex]

3. Even if that is true, we are better off then we would have been

if John McCain was POTUS for the last 4 years. Of that I have no doubt.

[Better Believe It]

4. That would not be a good campaign theme or slogan. "It would have been worse under McCain"

I agree it probably would have been worse and had McCain won the Presidency, Democrats would win the 2012 election by an even bigger landslide than in 2008.

Another bad slogan or theme .... "Obama has a vision for the future".

Vision isn't what people are looking for.

Vision doesn't put food on the table.

The people want decent jobs, a better life, a secure retirement, universal health care, less war and higher living standards.

[Rex]

5. But they won't get those things, 'America' has spoken and corporations

are in charge of things now. It is so obvious, even my father has noticed. That is BIG btw.

I agree...the slogan for 2012 should be, 'Well It Would Have Been Worse."

[spanone]

11. Obama is not god. never will be. never professed to be.

presidents can't create jobs. they can offer plans. congress has complete control over the spending of any money.

it would have been worse under mccain

and it will be even worse under any of the other offerings

vision is a good thing for a president.

[Rex]

17. And Eric Cantor is doing everything in his power to make Obama

fail, why don't people point that out more!?!?!

[Better Believe It]

18. Obama could have fought the Repubs for 3 years, not just with campaign rhetoic during an election!

[defendandprotect]

32. ROFL ... "Obams is not god" !! -- More accurately Obama is no FDR -- !!

Sadly, more like Hoover --

Obama is ignoring the will of the people --

We need new candidates who aren't pre-owned and pre-bribed by corporate money!!


Kinda big jump from chess game to "god" -- :eyes:

[XemaSab]

24. If I really thought Obama had a vision

then I would be more supportive.

I mean, FDR had a vision, and it was a vision that took a lot of time to achieve.

I haven't seen Obama working towards an eventual end. It seems to me like all the initiatives that he has pushed have been piecemeal, with no grand vision in sight.

Take the environment, for example. He's kinda sorta said that he's in favor of renewables, and he's thrown a few bones in that direction, but he doesn't seem worried at all about wilderness, national forests, national parks, the arctic slope, the oceans, or any other form of open space, while out the back door he's giving out freebies to the oil and gas industries.

All this leads me to conclude that he doesn't have any sort of big plan as far as the environment goes.

I am forced to conclude the same things about war, civil liberties, jobs, labor, education, and a host of other issues.

[defendandprotect]

33. Obama had a vision ... "preserve the private health care system" .....

and then Rahm Emmanuel bragged about how grateful business should be to

Obama -- especially for that !!

Rahm .... crowing about preserving "private health care industry" ... business s/b grateful!

In a Thursday interview, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel arguethat rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts: his advocacy of greater international trade and education reform open markets despite union skepticism; his rescue of the automobile industry; the fact that the

overhaul of health care preserved the private delivery system;

the fact that billions in the stimulus package benefited business with lucrative new contracts, and that financial regulation reform will take away the uncertainty that existed with a broken, pre-crash regulatory apparatus.


http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B2F85DDF-18FE-70B2-A835FE1E7FA8D74C


If that doesn't make you sick to your stomach, nothing will!

[uppityperson]

6. I wish congress would not automatically block everything. eojm

[Solomon]

7. It makes me laugh to think of what kind of posts would be made

had he said we are better off than we were before he was elected. Doesn't matter what this man says or does.

[Better Believe It]

8. Obama had the opportunity to become a liberal President and he blew it.

Of course, many would say that was never Obama's intention or ideology and that Obama was more like a centrist "blue dog" Chicago machine candidate who was in the pocket of Wall Street/La Salle Street and big business from day one.

Do you think that progressives/liberals didn't pay attention to Obama's record/statements and tried to turn him into another FDR, something he obviously isn't?

[Solomon]

9. Funny how you get to define what is democratic, what is progressive, etc.

At this point, you have so convinced yourself that Obama intends to harm you and all on the left, that you would find fault with absolutely anything this man does. Whether progressive or not.

The media has done a hell of job. Everybody convinced that Obama hasn't done anything, and what little he's done has caused more harm than good. Utter failure as a president, a waste. Polls polls polls.

Go ahead and have at it. Meanwhile, he's going to win a second term, and press on, people with your opinion notwithstanding.

[leftstreet]

12. Obama defined those terms during his campaign. That's why he won n/t

[Bobbie Jo]

22. Funny, and utterly ironic. nt

[uppityperson]

10. I know. It gets old. I didn't mean to sound that way if I did.

[Tatiana]

13. I'm glad he is finally being honest with himself and the American people.

We're worse off and that's clear. The people "occupying" America are proof of that. The talk of recovery always baffled me and, to be honest, irritated me a great deal.

The 99%ers are not recovering. They are sinking further into debt with no jobs and no way to lift themselves out of their personal financial crises.

Now that Obama has admitted the problem, maybe he will also propose some real solutions. Direct employment of the unemployed (if only temporarily) to help repair our infrastructure would be a start. The current jobs bill is woefully short of what this country needs to get back on its feet.

[defendandprotect]

15. You can keep hoping, but when was last time you heard Obama mention the homeless?

[Better Believe It]

16. President Obama is in principal opposed to the direct gov't employment of the jobless such as WPA.

He's made that perfectly clear and the proposed "jobs bill" will only create a few hundred thousand new jobs according to most economists and hardly impact the unemployment rate.

Of course, even this weak bill will not pass this Congress. Senator Reid isn't pushing it and some Democratic Senators will vote against it.

[JVS]

23. Well it's time for him to eat his peas and set his preference aside.

[sad sally]

19. If calling himself the underdog was meant to get voters excited, then

I'm confused.

How can an incumbent President, with over a year until the elections, with a campaign cash drawer that is reported to be at $1 Billion dollars and no selected opponent say he's the one who has such little status in the political world that at this particular time that he expects to lose? Makes no sense...

[Better Believe It]

20. An appeal to voters who like backing the "underdog"?

[XemaSab]

25. For a sitting president to call himself the underdog makes him look like a wimp

People root for the underdog; people don't root for the dog who goes out there with his tail between his legs and who rolls over at the first sign of a fight.

[defendandprotect]

34. Agree --- !! Calling for the pity vote --- !!

Hi -- "I'm not as bad as the other guy, but I've alienated my base -- "


By the way, Jonathan Cowan -- Pres. THIRD WAY which now controls the Dem Party

said on C-span the other day that their positions is that "the base shoudl be ignored" --

and that populist discussions/ddebate by candidates is the equal of Karl Rove extremist

propaganda -- !!


:nuke:

[Honeycombe8]

21. I think millions are worse off, but collectively we're all better off...because

we were on the brink of a Great Depression, and we no longer are. If you think 9% unemployment is bad, we could've gone into 25% unemployment territory. That's not going to happen. So in that sense, we're all better off.

But our individual situations...well, for half of us...is worse.

He shouldn't have said that.

[Better Believe It]

29. It appears we may now be on the brink, in 2011, of a new Great Depression.

This is certainly unlike any post World War II recession.

It's longer, deeper and threatens to escalate into a modern day full scale economic depression.

[defendandprotect]

36. This meltdown has never been a recession --- it's been a depression to a deep recession, imo ....

In fact, Obama called it a "Depression" in a yahoo article in August of last year --

and it was quickly scrubbed and replaced with "recession."

Many members of Congress came close to saying "depression" -- and settled on

"The Great Recession" --- !!! I'll say!!!


:nuke:

[defendandprotect]

35. ROFL -- We've been in a depression for more than a year -- maybe longer -- !!!

We have more than 16% unemployment -- 25 million unemployed when you count those

no longer eligible for unemployment benefits -- and/or working part times jobs when

they need and want full time jobs.

It could always be worse -- but we elected Obama to make things better -- !!

Not only has he not responded to what needed to be done he is consciously ignoring

the will of the people on every issue --


What would be better is a liberal in the White House -- let's work on that!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. As if we didn't already know that?