As summer is in full swing, how do voters feel Obama has impacted the nation in his first 3.5 years in the Oval Office?
In some ways, I don’t like polls like this. I mean, how do people gauge how a president has done, or should have done? How do they know if he’s doing well or poorly? In some cases, it may be some social cause that they champion; gay rights or women’s health. Perhaps for others, it’s military accomplishments; ending Iraq or killing Bin Laden. But in terms of the economy, I’m not sure how people reach their conclusion.
To be sure, this swings both ways. Obama is hammering Romney for his time at Bain when jobs were lost and even outsourced to low wage nations. The idea being that you don’t have to show that in some cases, this move actually CREATED jobs. All you have to do is throw the stigma of the evil corporate master who only cares for his own bottom line; worker be damned.
So, it is what it is. And for Obama, the news is bleak:
A new poll says President Obama has changed things for the worse in the United States.
A survey by The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, says that 56% of likely voters believe Obama has transformed the nation in a negative way, compared with 35% who believe the country has changed for the better on his watch.
“The results signal broad voter unease with the direction the nation has taken under Obama’s leadership and present a major challenge for the incumbent Democrat as he seeks re-election this fall,” reports The Hill.
I’m fairly certain I would have guessed an unease at the president’s job so far. People are beginning to recognize that while we’ve added jobs, we haven’t added enough. People are beginning to understand that each spring we seem to get better only to stall in the summer. Unemployment remains uncomfortably high, people are fleeing the job market and Obama doesn’t have a plan.
There is significant reason to believe that, if elected, we would see another 4 years of stagnant growth, if that, with growing numbers of people taking advantage of an ever increasing federal entitlement system.
The question is, can Romney capitalize?
