Most Americans Say They’re Worse Off Under Obama, Poll Shows

A snapshot of the state of our economy and public satisfaction is right below… Thoughts? Bloomberg News, December 8, 2010 By Rich Miller - Dec 9, 2010 More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when President Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. The survey, conducted Dec. 4-7, finds that 51 percent of respondents think their situation has deteriorated, compared with 35 percent who say they’re doing better. The balance isn’t sure. Americans have grown more downbeat about the country’s future in just the last couple of months, the poll shows. The pessimism cuts across political parties and age groups, and is common to both sexes. The negative sentiment may cast a pall over the holiday shopping season, according to the poll. A plurality of those surveyed – 46 percent – expects to spend less this year than last; only 12 percent anticipate spending more. Holiday sales rose by just under a half percent last year after falling by almost 4 percent in 2008. “It’s definitely different this year than it’s been,” says poll respondent Larry Deyo, a 38-year-old father of two in Marlton, New Jersey. “I can’t really do too much with spending.” He says he lost his job at a kitchen and bath design center when the company closed, and he’s now working at a Home Depot Inc. store with a “significant decrease” in pay. It was President Ronald Reagan who popularized the question, “Are you better off or worse off than you were four years ago” in his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter. Past Presidents Obama’s numbers in the poll, given the context of an economy that is struggling to recover from the longest recession since the Great Depression and the experience of past presidents, aren’t so bad. As Reagan approached the end of his second year in office, his numbers were more negative than Obama’s in this survey. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in Oct. 1982, 61 percent of Americans said things were worse and 33 percent said they had improved. Reagan won re-election in a landslide in 1984. In the final months of George W. Bush’s presidency, as the financial crisis intensified, Americans said by a 2-to-1 margin that their financial situation had deteriorated, compared with a year earlier. Americans in the poll also oppose Republican lawmakers’ calls to extend tax cuts for upper-income Americans beyond the end of 2010. Obama reluctantly agreed to a two-year extension of those cuts as part of a compromise package that also retained breaks for the middle class. Sixty-six percent say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That’s up from 62 percent who felt that way in an October poll and is the worst reading since the Bloomberg National Poll began in September 2009. Unemployment Is Top Issue Unemployment and jobs are the most important issue facing the country now, the poll finds. Fifty percent of those surveyed identified joblessness as their top concern, twice the number who chose the federal budget deficit and government spending. Members of Obama’s Democratic Party are about evenly split on the question of whether they are doing better than two years ago. Republicans and political independents are more downbeat. More than 60 percent of Republicans say they’re doing worse under Obama. Just over 50 percent of political independents feel that way, compared with a third who say their situation has improved. Obama, 49, inherited an economy in deep crisis. While it has started to recover – showing 3.2 percent growth over the past year – unemployment has remained high. Joblessness rose to a seven-month high of 9.8 percent in November, significantly above the 7.4 percent rate that prevailed in December 2008, the month before Obama was inaugurated. Stock Market Gains The stock market has performed much better. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index has risen more than 50 percent since Obama was sworn in Jan. 20, 2009. “After looking at all the politicians and all the policies, they’re not geared toward Americans. They’re geared toward the corporations,” says Ken Cmar, a 45-year-old poll respondent residing in Crystal River, Florida. He says his business aligning wheels on vehicles has shrunk as trucking companies and municipalities with bus fleets have cut back. “It’s that trickle-down economic thing and I’m at the wrong end,” Cmar says. By age group, only the young – those under 35, a core constituency for Obama in his presidential bid – consider themselves better off than they were two years ago. ‘Naivete of Youth’ The young often show a greater “sense that things are getting better for them than we see for older respondents,” says J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm that conducted the nationwide survey. “Maybe that is the sweet naivete of youth or, more likely, they are building their careers and things are, in fact, getting better for them.” While Democrats and political independents agree that unemployment is the top issue, Republicans are about evenly split between jobs and the budget deficit, which totaled $1.29 trillion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. “The deficit is outrageous,” says poll respondent Lisa Brandel, a 36-year-old free-lance writer in Bellefontaine, Ohio. “But the root of the problem is that we need more jobs. If we get better employment, more people will be paying taxes and the deficit will go down.” On the tax cuts, the survey conducted before, during and after the negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans this week, shows that only a third of Americans support keeping the lower rates for the highest earners. Tax Cuts Another third say they want only the tax cuts for the middle class to be extended, while more than a fourth say all the tax cuts should be allowed to expire Dec. 31, as scheduled. The agreement Obama announced Dec. 6 would temporarily sustain the tax reductions for all income levels. The president said the compromise was needed to break a deadlock with Republicans who vowed to block tax cuts for middle-income Americans if those for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 weren’t extended, too. The Bloomberg National survey of 1,000 U.S. adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. To contact the reporter on this story: Rich Miller in Washington rmiller28@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net

I bet his horrible poll numbers are actually optomistic. We all know the die-hard Obamanics are too stubborn to admit the truth the country is being driven to the ground. They probably voted in approval of Obama, went home, locked the door, and cried.

“Most amputees say their quality of life was better before losing their limbs” “Most hangover sufferers say they preferred the party to the morning after.”

bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > “Most amputees say their quality of life was > better before losing their limbs” Ha ha…I remember these polls being done under the Bush years and every 2 years people would say they were worse off now that they were 2 years back. So is there any surprise if the downward slide continues?

bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > “Most hangover sufferers say they preferred the > party to the morning after.” Well said.

Numbers are nothing new. We are in the middle of the biggest recession since the depression. Jesus himself could be the POTUS, with Ghandi as Secretary of State, Robocop as Secretary of Defense, and Scrooge as the Treasury Secretary, and we’d still see the same numbers. B.O. didn’t cause the recession, but he sure as hell convinced everyone he could fix it. So he’s basically reaping what he sowed. Add that to a belligerent and schizophrenic electorate that wants less government as long as it leaves Social Security, Medicare, Defense spending, federal employees, federal benefits, etc. untouched. Personally, being the executive officer of this country would suck the big one at the moment no matter what you do.

Most Americans are worse off, that is, except stock market investors.

Just a footnote, B.O. sure played a lot of golf during his first two years. When he got critized for golfing too much, he quietly swithed to basketball…

Had he switched to soccer we probably would have won the World Cup nomination.

I’m personally better off than I was 2 years ago. I was also better off after each year of Bush’s presidency. Neither president had anything to do with it.

AlphaSeeker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just a footnote, B.O. sure played a lot of golf > during his first two years. > > When he got critized for golfing too much, he > quietly swithed to basketball… I haven’t seen his round totals. How much did he play? I remember looking at how much Ike played while he was in office and it was insane, something like 100 rounds per year and most of them were at Augusta. GHW Bush also played a lot while in office, although he completed rounds in 90 minutes.

AlphaSeeker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just a footnote, B.O. sure played a lot of golf > during his first two years. > > When he got critized for golfing too much, he > quietly swithed to basketball… Yeah, but he can’t even touch Bush’s record for acres of brush cleared.

Your numbers may vary slightly, but these are close enough, I think. S&P 500 on January 20, 2009 (inauguration): 805 S&P 500 on December 8, 2010: 1228 The S&P 500 has increased more than 50% since Obama was inaugurated.

Oh, and the S&P 500 fell about 40% between Bush’s inauguration and Obama’s inauguration.

frisian Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Your numbers may vary slightly, but these are > close enough, I think. > > S&P 500 on January 20, 2009 (inauguration): 805 > S&P 500 on December 8, 2010: 1228 > > The S&P 500 has increased more than 50% since > Obama was inaugurated. And yet, even with the strong help of the stock market, B.O. still get a worse off rating from the poll?! Analyze that!

^ Can anyone point to something SPECIFIC that Obama did to create that 50% return?

BValGuy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ^ Can anyone point to something SPECIFIC that > Obama did to create that 50% return? Bailing out banks, economic stimulus, tax cuts (included in the stimulus), stabilizing the economy, restoring confidence and preventing a systemic collapse .

I know it’s heresy, but I’d give most of that credit to Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner, with Bush and Obama both a distant 4th. Of course Bush and Greenspan get top billing for creating the whole mess in the first place.

This discussion is stupid. There are trillions of dollars of mortgages outstanding that were issued at too low of interest rates or with poor underwriting procedures. This created a massive bubble over the past decades in the nations largest asset, while leverage rose on the personal, corporate and national levels (trifecta). Meanwhile, distracted by the rewards of real estate speculation lifestyle improvement built on debt accumulation, all fundamentals deteriorated beneath the leverage mask. We watched the current account deficit explode, while letting jobs slip overseas apathetically as the Chinese suppressed their exchange rate, polluted horribly (we mistakenly celebrated this as industrial greening within our borders) and refused to respect international patent laws. Now we are in the correction era (along with the Europeans) and we can’t understand why decades of rapid fundamental deterioration take more than 2 years to recover, or why a one man figurehead at the top of our government can’t wave a magic wand at it and make it better. Trying to tie the current economic situation to a president is retarded. This is beyond fiscal band aids, de-leveraging is a fever you have to sweat out. So yes, of course its worse. Is our current economic situation in any way tied to Obama, no not really. Bush? No, not really. Is it the aggregate aftermath of the actions of the entire nation’s populace, systemic banking flaws and international trade policy? Yeah, probably.

^ Well put Swanny