Obama is in deep trouble, as shown by his sagging poll numbers. Even the biggest bounce he got from the killing of Osama bin Laden has faded, as we knew it would. So once again, the economy and his handling of the budget are front and center, as they will be throughout the election. But the American people don’t like what he’s doing and he has no idea what else to do. How bad are things? Dire.Let’s start with the poll numbers (according to Reuters):
● 49% of Americans disapprove of his handling of his job. Only 47% approve. But that's the good news. . . read on.These numbers are disastrous. This means that literally every conservative and independent disapproves of his handling of the economy and the deficit, and that even some Democrats are starting to disapprove as well.
● 59% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy. That's a career killer.
● Only 33% approve of his handling of the deficit. That’s down 6% since April.
● 89% of Americans think the economy is in bad shape. 57% say we are in recession.
● 66% say the US is on the wrong track.
Why would people be so upset? Well, for one thing, inflation is out of control. As we discussed before, inflation is officially in the 2% range, but that excludes food and gas. When we factor those in, our readers seem to think 15%-20% is more accurate. That’s worse than the worst moments under Carter.
Official unemployment remains around 9%, and real unemployment is closer to 16%. As Lawhawk pointed out the other day, no President since FDR has ever been re-elected when unemployment was above 7.2%. And no one is going to hire until Obama changes his policies wholesale.
Not surprisingly, personal consumption is falling. Consumer confidence dropped 10% last month, to an anemic 60.8. Durable goods orders, i.e. what factories are making, declined 3.6% last month (worst numbers since 1984). This means consumers and businesses expect trouble and are hunkering down. And car sales fell 3.7% to well below the level the car companies need to be profitable, and even The Washington Post is calling Obama a liar about his bailout success claims.
And, as anyone other than a Democrat would expect, home prices rose temporarily when the federal home-buying tax credit was in effect, and fell like a stone the moment the tax credit expired. Home values in big urban areas fell to their lowest level since 2002 as foreclosures depressed prices. S&P Chairman David Blitzer refers to this as a “double dip in home prices across much of the nation.” Home construction starts fell too, even though this is usually the start of the building season.
High gas prices, out of control inflation, crashing home values and massive unemployment. . . what’s not to love?
What's really interesting though, is that Obama should have had a good month. The Republicans lost in upstate New York apparently (if you believe the MSM) because of Paul Ryan's Medicare plan. Newt Gingrich attacked that plan too. The Democrats spent the month blasting the Republicans for playing chicken with the debt ceiling, a very serious charge. And a great many people complained that the Republicans were either too aggressive or too timid in budget cut demands. Yet, on the question of who would handle the economy better, congressional Republicans gained 11% points last month!
How can this be? I think the answer is simple: Obama has nothing to offer. He's added $4.6 trillion to our $14.3 trillion dollar debt -- that's 32.2% of the total debt in only three years. And he's offered nothing but token cuts to fix this. Even worse, he and his Democratic friends have opposed everything the Republicans have tried to do to fix this without ever offering their own plan. The American people aren't taking kindly to that. This is like the captain of the Titanic trying to blow holes in the lifeboats so that he can shift the blame to the guy who is trying to save everyone from the captain's mistake.
Similarly, after spending a greater amount than the GDP of all but 14 countries as a stimulus package, Obama has only lost jobs to show for it. How can you spend the Korean economy (which employs around 30 million people) and not produce any jobs? That's an incredible level of incompetence. What's worse, having tried the only thing he knew to do and failed, he now has no idea what to do next.
That is the problem for Obama. He's created an economic disaster on a scale somewhere between Jimmy Carter and the Great Depression and he has no plan to fix this except to play politics with every Republican proposal. That's why his numbers continue to fall and why they won't recover.
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