Obama: "I Tried Real Hard"

"I suspect that most people in Cincinnati would acknowledge that I've tried real hard, and we haven't gotten the Republicans to engage on a whole range of issues that, I wish had happened," Obama said in an interview with WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Via Hot Air.

He has a weak hand to play, so his appeals tend to sound, well, weak. Negotiating from a point of weakness and such. And essentially begging the country's indulgence and patience for his poor performance.

Is this working? Some good quotes of the day from Saturday. This one alarmed me some.

Obama runs even with, or slightly ahead of, Republican rival Mitt Romney in poll after poll. Campaign strategists debate the reasons.

They might include Obama’s personal likability, gaps in Romney’s strategy or Americans’ grudging acceptance of a new normal in which millions of jobs are gone for good and no single person is responsible.

If high unemployment “was a killer, he’d already be dead,” said Republican pollster and consultant Mike McKenna. “The survey data tells you he’s not dead.”

The problem with that line is that Jimmy Carter wasn't "dead" at this point in 1980, according to polls -- and yet, actually, he was.

Larry Kudlow shares the belief that Obama's goose is already cooked.

[O]bama’s goose may already be cooked.

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC), spearheaded by Texas congressman Kevin Brady, put out a report saying that the Obama recovery now ranks dead last in modern times. That’s a real milestone in the post-WWII era. It’s ten out of ten for both jobs and economic growth. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP has expanded only 6.7 percent over the eleven-quarter recovery since the recession ended. The Reagan recovery at the same stage had increased by 17.6 percent. The Clinton recovery by 8.7 percent.

As for jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of private-sector jobs has grown by only 4.1 percent since the cyclical low point. Reagan’s record was 10.7 percent.

So much for Obamanomics. Didn’t work. Still isn’t working. As the JEC put it, spending stimulus, housing bailouts, auto bailouts, financial bailouts, cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, and $5 trillion in deficit spending left the Obama recovery dead last in modern times.

For Obama to win, it would require that people decide that they simply do not care that his presidency has overseen a stagnant economy that actually seems to be deterioriating. That hasn't been the case in the past, and I don't know it would be the case now.

Flashback: In 2004, Obama dismissed the Republicans' attempt to suggest the economy was improving. After all, the unemployment rate was 5.6% and we'd just added 310,000 jobs in a month. Far too soon to say we'd made progress, he urged.

posted by Ace at 12:46 PM

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