Poor Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic presidential nominee has to take two virtually incompatible stances during this election: Acknowledge the public’s deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, while not being seen tarnishing a president still popular with her Democratic base.
Much was made last week about the “dark” picture GOP nominee Donald Trump painted in his own convention speech. But if Trump went too far in one direction, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats went too far in proclaiming morning in an America that doesn’t see things as so bright.
On average across several national polls, more than two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track — with a 44-point gap between the percent saying wrong track and those saying right track.
One individual pollster that has been asking the same right track/wrong track question over time is Gallup. It currently shows the right/wrong gap at minus-65 points, which is almost exactly where it was at this same stage of the 1992 and 2008 elections.
As you may recall, the party in control of the White House lost both of those elections. And before you point out that Republicans are in control of an unpopular Congress, remember that 1992 and 2008 were also times of divided government. The party holding the presidency (the GOP both times) lost to the party holding the Congress.
Nothing about that polling data suggests the Democrats should expect to win a third straight term. Their hope hinges on the notion Trump is not only dangerous and unpredictable but overly pessimistic. In Philadelphia, Biden and Obama tried to counter that not only by portraying Clinton as safe and steady, but by making America today seem extra sunny.
“While this nation has been tested by war and recession and all manner of challenge,” Obama declared, “I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your President, to tell you I am even more optimistic about the future of America. How could I not be, after all we’ve achieved together?”
That’s cold comfort to those who are still without work (years after the recession ended, millions of working-age Americans remain out of the labor force) or who are earning less than before (real median household income remains 6.5 percent below the 2007 level).
It sounds discordant to those who by 2008 had come not to expect another terrorist attack on the homeland, and who now read about lethal ISIS attacks on Americans or some of our closest allies with alarming frequency.
It rings hollow to those who went from having low-cost health insurance plans that denied their claims to high-cost insurance plans that set sky-high deductibles before they’ll start paying for claims.
It beggars belief for those who have watched shooting by and of police officers become staples of our news headlines.
Pointing out these kinds of things is not “fear mongering” or unpatriotic, or at least Democrats didn’t think so in 2004 or 2008.
Understandably, Obama doesn’t want to be remembered for those things. But we aren’t voting for his political epitaph this November. We’re electing someone to deal with the real problems we face. Step One: Acknowledge they exist.
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