It's another bad week for President Obama. Fresh off of Obama's comments last week that the private sector is "doing fine," the man who is famous for the quote, "It's the economy, stupid," Democratic pollster James Carville, is telling team Obama that the President's the "economy is getting better" argument just isn't working for anyone....including Democrats.
Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville have released a striking new report arguing in stark terms that some key voting groups now reject President Obama's claim that the economy is improving -- and may well reject Obama himself in November.
Democracy Corps, the political consulting group run by Greenberg and Carville, showed several Obama campaign commercials to focus groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Several of the group members, who were "all independents or weak partisans and ticket-splitters" and included both Obama and McCain voters from 2008, became irritated when shown Obama ads touting economic improvement. They don't see that improvement in their own lives, the report says, and they don't believe Obama when he claims things are better.
"It's like how things are getting better? Where?" asked one non-college-educated woman in Columbia, Ohio. "I don't see it. Makes me mad." Even Obama's oft-made claim that he saved the auto industry angered some. "The auto industry spot, surprisingly, produces a lot of resentment," Greenberg and Carville write. "Women in particular did not see how it related to them, and even some men working outside manufacturing thought it left them out." As one woman in Ohio said: "Good job for the autoworkers, but where does that leave my grandchildren?"
After extensive interviews with the groups, Greenberg and Carville conclude that Obama's current campaign message -- that he inherited a terrible economy but that now things are getting better -- is disastrously wrong. "We will face an impossible headwind in November if we do not move to a new narrative," Greenberg and Carville write, "one that contextualizes the recovery but, more importantly, focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class."
So the question is:
It's no wonder Obama's current message on the economy isn't working. The fact is, unemployment sits at 8.2 percent, the National Debt is about to top $16 trillion and small businesses are already being suffocated by ObamaCare. People don't need President Obama to tell them how the economy is, people can feel it on their own every day.
FLASHBACK: David Axelrod "If you stand up and claim great progress you're only frustrating this alienated middle class more."
"Well I think Bush did it from the 9th hole and from the cigar boat and other places and the impression he got was that he was out of touch."
While Axelrod critized Former President H.W. Bush for saying the economy was getting better from the "9th hole," President Obama is nearing his 100th round of golf in his first term.
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