Business
Economy dealing blow to Obama’s 2012 hopes
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about military veterans entering the workforce at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, August 5, 2011.Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
With every gloomy economic report, debt crisis and mood swing on Wall Street, President Barack Obama’s fight for re-election in 2012 gets a little tougher.
The recent rash of bad economic news has deepened a sour public mood and threatens to turn a re-election campaign that Democrats once hoped would be a cakewalk into an unpredictable brawl.
“The economic head-winds Obama faces are extraordinarily difficult,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.
“The level of public pessimism and the duration of the negativity is something I have not seen before,” she said. “It’s a performance-based job, and people want to start seeing the economy turn around.”
His job approval was slumping even before last week’s global stock sell-off and twin debt crises in Europe and in the United States, which featured a U.S. credit rating downgrade and chaotic talks on a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.
In the last week of July, Gallup put Obama’s approval at a weekly low of 42 percent.
A Quinnipiac University poll taken after the debt-ceiling deal last week found a majority in the battleground state of Florida did not think Obama deserved re-election. His approval among independents in the state plunged from a 47-45 percent split in May to 61-33 percent disapproval now.
“Elections with incumbents are always referendums on the incumbent, and the first question for voters is ‘does he deserve another term?’ At this point, these numbers show the answer is not necessarily yes,” Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown said.
The president’s slump gives new hope to Republicans, who saw several potential contenders pass on a 2012 White House race earlier this year amid speculation Obama would be too strong and too well financed to lose re-election.
Republicans plan to remind voters often of the job losses, stalled economic recovery and stagnant housing market on Obama’s watch. They stepped up their criticism of the president after Friday’s U.S. credit downgrade.
