Five and half months before the election, polls find President Obama and the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in a virtual dead heat. The reason is the stagnant economy. While Obama holds Democrats, and Romney Republicans, independents have swung to Romney because they dislike his economic ideas less than Obama's.
A recent Pew Research poll profiled the U.S. electorate. In 2012, Pew projects that 10 percent of potential voters will not vote. Pew allocates the remaining 90 percent to three groups: "Mostly Republican," 25 percent, "Mostly Independent," 35 percent, and "Mostly Democratic," 40 percent. (Pew allocates Libertarians, 10 percent, to the independent bloc, but most of us consider them Republicans.) Writing in the New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky observed, "Only 7 percent of the entire electorate... were truly swing voters."
Whatever their actual percentage, independents are unhappy with the president. A June 13th ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 54 percent of independents disliked Obama's plans. (47 percent of independents viewed Romney's plans negatively.)
One explanation is because the economy has been bad for more than three years, independents blame the president -- they expected him to have solved the problems. Another explanation is that independents are inclined to give Romney the benefit of the doubt because they don't know him as well as Obama.
Of course, Mitt Romney blames Obama for the nation's economic woes. "When he was recently elected [Obama] went on the The Today Show and he was asked about what he'd do, how he'd measure his success, and he said" 'Look, if I can't turn the economy around in three years, I will be looking at a one-term proposition.'" Romney says the president is "driving the U.S. forward over a cliff."
Not surprisingly, Obama sees things differently.
"Long before the economic crisis of 2008 the basic bargain at the heart of this country has begun to erode. For more than a decade, it had become harder to find a job that paid the bills, harder to save, harder to retire, harder to keep up with rising costs of gas and health care and college tuitions... [Republicans said] that huge tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest Americans, would lead to faster job growth. We were told that fewer regulations, especially for big financial institutions and corporations, would bring about widespread prosperity. We were told that it was OK to put two wars on the nation's credit card; that tax cuts would create a enough growth to pay for themselves. And in the fall of 2008 it all came tumbling down with a financial crisis that plunged the world into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Here in America families' wealth declined at a rate nearly seven times faster than when the market crashed in 1929. Millions of homes were foreclosed our deficit soared, and 9 million of our citizens lost their jobs..."
Republicans blame Obama while the president blames Republican economic policies that were in place long before he was elected. Given the ABC News/Washington Post Poll, it appears that independents believe the Republican explanation. But it's likely they're not sure which party to trust. A recent Daily Kos poll found that "Among independents, 50 percent said that Republicans are stalling the recovery compared to 40 percent who said they are not."
The fact that independents don't trust either party is a ray of hope for Obama.
The president has to do four things to win back independents. First, he has to tie the current economic malaise to failed Republican policies. For example, he has to point out that private sector jobs have recovered during his tenure; the job loss has been in the public sector -- 600,000 jobs -- due to Republican actions at the state and local level. Second, Obama has to tie Romney to these policies and paint him as the reincarnation of George W. Bush -- in a recent Gallup Poll 68 percent of respondents said Bush was responsible for the bad state of the economy.
Third, Obama has to explain what he'll do in the next four years; what actions will he take to improve the economy given the likelihood that Democrats will not control both the House and Senate? In his Cleveland speech Obama described "an economy that's built not from the top down but from a growing middle class; that provides ladders of opportunities for folks who aren't yet in the middle class." The recent Survey of Consumer Finances revealed that between 2007 and 2010 median U.S. family income dropped by nearly 8 percent. Obama has to communicate that recent economic gains have all gone to the top 1 percent, not the middle class. And finally, Obama has to tie Romney to the 1 percent -- paint him as the pawn of those who have ripped off the middle class.
Despite all the bad economic news, Obama has a favorability lead over Romney. The president has to build upon this and convince independents their best interests will be served by voting for him in November.
George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling: Obama vs. Romney: The Framing Matchup, Round One
Eric Zuesse: America's Ideological Crisis
Bob Burnett: 10 Reasons Obama Can Win
Instead we get eye glazing policy statements we can't relate to and attack ads. In my neighborhood the Romney group keeps running Obama's misunderstood line the economy is doing fine. Obama's gauzy response ad is about how he signed a bill getting women equal pay.
The electorate, unable to choose the lesser of two weasels is going to sit the election out.
Stop the excuses and accept the responsibility.
Obama's first three months witnessed a loss of 2.34 million jobs; Bush saw a growth of 20,000 jobs.
More jobs were lost in the recession of 2007-09 than in the previous four recessions combined. At the current pace, it looks as if it will take until late 2016 to make up for the net job loss to date of 7.5 million. There were six million jobs outsourced under President Bush and then we lost 8.5 million jobs under the recession the GOP passed to the current administration. Isn't that 8.5 million jobs lost and 6 million outsourced jobs really close to the 15 million unemployed Americans? Bush and the Republicans ended their term with payroll employment below where it was when they took office, the first time that’s happened since the Hoover administration.
Measured in growth, the American economy outperformed those of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan - every Group of 7 developed nation except Canada. Corporate profits are at their highest since 1960 with corporations sitting on the largest stockpile of cash in US history.
By the first quarter of 2011, unemployment had the steepest drop over a three-month span since 1983. In March after 18 months of solid growth the jobless rate fell from 9.1% to 8.8% with the best jobs report in three years (now at 8.6%), an average of 220,000 jobs created in each of the previous three months, GDP grew 1.3%, the economy expanded 0.4% and Gross Domestic Income rose 2.4%.
Manufacturing reached the highest reading since May 2004 with expansion for 19 straight months - the employment index topped 60 for only the third time in a decade with jobs created at the highest rate in 38 years - the highest reading since January 2004.
Total tax revenues of states returned to pre-recession levels in the 2011 third quarter. This is Obama's economic policy.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42905
Only time (in November) will tell where the smart money landed.
25 million people are either out of work or looking for full-time work, and they are expecting the government to do something about it. The President has sent the Jobs Bill and the Highway Transportation Bill to Congress and they refuse to act. Both of those Bills are fully paid for and would add millions of jobs to the economy, and quickly. But Congress still refuses to act, saying "government doesn't create jobs." THE HELL IT DOESN'T!! Those jobs would be good job, well-paying jobs, solid, permanent, tax-paying jobs. Those jobs would pay mortgages, buy new homes, new cars, new clothes, new appliances; build our nation's highways, fix our nation's bridges, repair our nation's schools; add teachers to our crowded classrooms and emergency workers to our over-burdened police and fire departments. What other kind of jobs would you have us have, Republicans?? Are those jobs not REAL jobs?? Don't they pay the bills and pay the taxes?? Don't they lead to MORE jobs by creating demand, and demand creating even MORE jobs??
What kind of jobs are the "right" jobs, Republicans?? The 1% jobs that you have??
FAILED Economy - 3 1/2 years
Obama - 0
When Democrats reclaimed the Senate majority in the 2006 midterm elections, cloture filings shot up from 68 in 2005-2006 to a record 139 in 2007-2008. The filibusters were GOP filibusters of Democrat Senate majority legislation. In the 111th Congress, there were 137 cloture motions filed and 63 cloture votes. This year there were 48 motions and 19 cloture votes because most legislation didn't make it out of committee.
The Republicans in the last three years were responsible for 25% of all cloture votes recorded in the past 90 years.
Before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down and deny Democrats any Republican support.
Their plan during a near depression of their own creating was to halt government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/politics/17mcconnell.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/cloture_motions/clotureCounts.htm
Don't hold your breath on that. Not gonna happen. President Paddy-Cake will not confront romney in the persistent and 'in-your-face' manner that's required to get the message clearly communicated to voters. It takes forcefulness, repetition, and brutal honesty.
So as the President tiptoes around the mountain of republican atrocities to desperately polish his "bipartisan" chops (because polls said that independents don't like partisanship!), independents drift away. The President and the campaign have failed to figure out that results actually matter far, far more than superficial fluff, such as posing as a bipartisan.
Thankfully, there are "teaching moments" right within grasp, for all Americans -- including Obama:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/roberto-unger-obama_n_1602812.html
Whether your agree or disagree with Harvard professor Unger's conclusions, his commentary and analysis should be 10 minutes of every American's education.
Thanks, and Enjoy.
Presidents get credit for a great economy and get blame for a rotten economy and truth be known, they don't have a damn thing to do with either, but that's how the world works.
might be a much different world (and US place in it) had jimmy carter been re-elected...