I think the White House can read polls and it appears they are beginning to adapt their strategy to facts on the ground. All year they have done compromise, centrism, and deficts. And what did it get? An all time low approval rating of 36% on jobs and the economy, and a near low on the deficit.
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post describes the polling and what he thinks it means:
Obama must break the current political dynamic, or else: There’s no sugar-coating it: Today’s new Washington Post poll shows that unless President Obama figures out a way to break out of the current political dynamic, he’s at serious risk. The key tell in the poll is not just that he’s at an all time low of 36 percent approval on both jobs and the economy, though that’s obviously important.
What’s really telling is that Obama’s current approach isn’t even gaining him credit on the deficit, even though he has prioritized the deficit and debt, to take spending off the table as an issue in order to focus on jobs. Only 36 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the deficit, a near low, despite his presiding over a debt ceiling deal creating a Congressional deficit supercommittee that will start its work this fall. Tellingly, this number is identical to the numbers on the economy and jobs — suggesting yet again that voter anxiety about the deficit is merely a proxy for anxiety about the economy.
The poll shows that Obama and Republicans are evenly split on who is more trusted on the economy, and that Republicans edge Obama on the deficit.
WaPo, The Plum Line
-------- Approve -------- ------- Disapprove ------ No
NET Strongly Somewhat NET Somewhat Strongly opinion
a. The economy 36 15 21 62 15 47 2
b. Creating jobs 36 15 21 62 18 45 2
c. The federal
budget deficit 36 18 18 60 14 46 4
d. The threat of 62 33 29 32 12 21 6
terrorism
Washington Post-ABC News Poll
Yesterday in his Labor Day speech, President Obama did not just attack Congress and act like both parties were at fault. No, he actually used the "R' word: he called out Congressional Republicans:
“I’m going to propose ways to put America back to work that both parties can agree to, because I still believe both parties can work together to solve our problems. And given the urgency of this moment, given the hardship that many people are facing, folks have got to get together.
“But we’re not going to wait for them. We’re going to see if we’ve got some straight shooters in Congress. We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party. We’ll give them a plan, and then we’ll say, ‘Do you want to create jobs? Then put our construction workers back to work rebuilding America. Do you want to help our companies succeed? Open up new markets for them to sell their products. You say you’re the party of tax cuts? Well then, prove you’ll fight just as hard for tax cuts for middle-class families as you do for oil companies and the most affluent Americans. Show us what you got.’
“The time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now. No more manufactured crises. No more games. Now is not the time for the people you sent to Washington to worry about their jobs; now is the time for them to worry about your jobs.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/...
It's a start. It looks to me he has no choice but confrontation. The infrastructure idea is a good idea and a Democratic Party idea. It will create jobs, Nonetheless, two of elements are Republican ideas: job-killing trade agreements and tax-cuts. He pitches the tax cuts in a populist way, so it is not all bad, but there is no data that "tax cuts create jobs." If the social security tax cuts of 2% actually created many jobs, we'd have it now. Job-killing trade agreements are not going to create jobs.
Robert Reich had an excellent article in Sunday's New York Times that addressed the real problem behind the jobless recovery, a problem neither President Obama nor the Republicans seem to want to talk about:
THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.
When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?
The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed.
New York Times
I think Reich is right: The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed.
That's not happening.
So we will have a war of rhetoric. At least the President now is engaging the enemy rhetorically.
The 2012 election will be a fight over who to blame for the lack of jobs: Obama or the Republicans.
I have little confidence, however, that anyone will face the real problem: "The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed."
I don't think anyone is going to even talk about the real issues in 2012.