Everyone in America, including President Obama, is excited that November has brought the return of basketball (notice in the linked photo: his toe is on the line.) Unfortunately, he is not leaving the pivots to the players on the court. Instead, President Obama continues to make half-hearted "pivots" to the economy at a time when Americans are struggling to find full-time work and are dealing with the disastrous rollout of Obamacare.
Earlier this week, the president touted his economic policies in Cleveland, Ohio, and said that he wants "us to get to where we need to be."
Unfortunately for the president, unquantifiable rhetoric that comes right out of his campaign playbook does not help Americans get back on their feet. To say that companies are "starting to talk about bringing those jobs back to America. We're starting to see that," does not count as a plan.
And the people of Cleveland -- and communities all across the country -- are feeling the negative effects of this lack of economic focus.
Cleveland, for example, is city that has averaged a 9.5 percent unemployment rate this year and is home to a world-famous healthcare center, Cleveland Clinic, that recently said "it would cut jobs and slash five to six percent of its $6 billion annual budget to prepare for President Barack Obama's health reforms." Strange how the resident didn't bring any of this up during the speech to his Cleveland audience.
Not only has the president's lack of focus kept millions of Americans from enjoying an economic recovery -- his philosophy of using the government as the focal point to jumpstart the economy is leaving Americans disillusioned.
Dan Balz of the Washington Post recently wrote that on progressive causes like Obamacare and on "providing economic security to the middle class, Obama has struggled to gain support for a significantly more robust role for government."
Balz is right. Americans have grown impatient with the Left's continuous support for failed policies and their "just trust us, and wait for things to get better" mentality.
Even young people, a group that has supported the president in the past, "understood that after the 2007-2009 recession that times would be tough. But few say they expected to be in economic limbo more than four years later," according to the Associated Press.
Because of this, conservatives have the opportunity to address the problems that middle-class Americans are facing. Policies that improve job prospects, lower costs for everyday things like gas and groceries, and help bend the cost curve for healthcare and higher education. It's not enough to say that the Left's views don't work. The American people know that. They're waiting for sound conservative alternatives.