President Obama’s ‘are you better off’ problem
Every re-election race — from city council to president — ultimately comes down to a simple question: Are you better off than you were (fill-in-the-blank) years ago?
To win, the incumbent has to convince a majority of voters that the answer to that question is “yes” (or that it will be “yes” in the not-too-distant future).
As of today, according to new polling conducted by the Washington Post/ABC News, nearly nine in 10 adults say they are either “about the same”(50 percent) or worse off (35 percent) financially than they were four years ago. Just 15 percent describe themselves as “better off”.
And that is a major problem for President Obama heading into his re-election race next fall.
The president has argued — and will continue to make the case — that he inherited an economy on the verge of collapse and took a number of actions to simply keep the country’s finances afloat.