Michael Barone‘s latest column for the Washington Examiner explains how the nation’s continuing economic struggles have hindered the president’s pursuit of other goals:
Like many Democrats over the past 40 years, Barack Obama has hoped
that his association with unpopular liberal positions on cultural issues
would be outweighed by pushing economic policies intended to benefit
the ordinary person.In his campaign in 2008 and as president in 2009 and 2010, he has
hoped that those he characterized to a rich San Francisco Bay area
audience as bitterly clinging to guns and God would be won over by
programs to stimulate the economy and provide guaranteed health
insurance.At least so far, it hasn?t worked, as witnessed by recent statements by some of the Democrats? smartest thinkers.
The 2009 stimulus package is so unpopular that Democrats have banned
the word from their campaign vocabulary. ?I?m not supposed to call it
stimulus,? Rep. Barney Frank told the ?Daily Show??s Jon Stewart. ?The
message experts in Washington have told us that we?re supposed to call
it the recovery plan.?I?m puzzled by that,? Frank went on. ?Most people would rather be
stimulated than recover.? The problem is, the economy has neither been
stimulated nor has it recovered.As for the health care bill, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg,
who has been pondering Democrats? standing with working class voters
since his perceptive 1980s studies of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County,
Mich., has pretty much thrown in the towel.In a leaked report for Democratic insiders Greenberg and fellow
pollster Celinda Lake concede that ?straightforward ?policy? defenses
fail to be moving voters? opinions about the law? and ?many don?t
believe health reform will help the economy.?
