Jobs numbers give Obama reason to smile
President Obama sounded a restrained note Friday when addressing new economic numbers showing 243,000 new jobs in January, telling a group of Virginia firefighters that while the new numbers show that "the economy is growing stronger," there remain "still far too many Americans that need a job."
© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Behind closed doors, however, the president and his reelection team have reason to celebrate. While the numbers could still take a turn for the worse before November, the unemployment rate (now at 8.3 percent) has been falling consistently for months - and polls show Americans are starting to see signs of economic life. That's extremely good news for a president whose biggest vulnerability in his reelection bid is his stewardship of the still-fragile economy.
Economy adds 243K jobs, unemployment rate drops
Last month, amid positive economic indicators, a CBS News/New York Times survey showed that for the first time in nearly a year, more Americans said the economy was improving than said it was getting worse. There was still widespread pessimism over the condition and direction of the economy, but less than there had been in previous months; the percentage of Americans who said Mr. Obama had made real progress in fixing the economy, meanwhile, increased from 28 percent to 35 percent between December and January.
That isn't to say Mr. Obama is in a strong position. His overall approval rating is below 50 percent in most polls, with the average currently at 46.5 percent; his disapproval is averaging about 48 percent. It doesn't take a political scientist to understand that when a president's approval rating is lower than his disapproval rating, he's going to have a hard time getting reelected.
CBS News polling in December found that while 41 percent of Americans think Mr. Obama has performed his job well enough to be elected to a second term, 54 percent don't think so. In that poll, just 33 percent approved of his handling of the economy, while 60 percent disapproved.
Mr. Obama's most likely general election opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has zeroed in on the president's handling of the economy, and it will likely be his most consistent argument against Mr. Obama if Romney becomes the nominee. Like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels in his response to Mr. Obama's State of the Union address, Romney has been casting the economy in dour terms.
"Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7 percent in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II," he said in response to the new economic numbers. "As a result, the percentage of Americans in the job market continues to decline and is now at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work. Long-term unemployment remains at record levels."
Romney added that the new numbers "cannot hide the fact that President Obama's policies have prevented a true economic recovery."
Yet the reality is that the new numbers certainly give a boost to Mr. Obama's suggestion in Arlington Friday that the economy is growing and "the recovery is speeding up." And that in turn gives a boost to his reelection prospects.
Perhaps the best historical comparison to Mr. Obama's situation is that faced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who became president at the height of the Great Depression. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 with the unemployment rate at nearly 17 percent; a staggeringly high number, but one that reflected an improvement from the 23.6 percent rate of 1932. What mattered to Americans was that Roosevelt seemed to be making things better, not that they were still relatively bad.
It's almost a sure thing that the economy will not be where most Americans want it to be by the time Election Day rolls around. But if it seems to be on the road to full recovery, they are far more likely to offer Mr. Obama another four years in office. As Nate Silver of the New York Times points out, Americans have tended when choosing a president to "give greater weight to recent job growth, discounting earlier performance when the trajectory seems positive."
That means the relatively anemic job growth of Mr. Obama's first three years matters less then what happens in 2012; Silver suggests that every time the economy generates more than 150,000 jobs in a month between now and November, Mr. Obama's reelection odds go up. That's why today's news is so good for Mr. Obama: if January's numbers reflect a trend that lasts deep into the year, it's going to be awfully hard for Romney (or any Republican) to convince a majority of Americans that Mr. Obama has failed in his stewardship of the economy. And with polls showing that Americans are more concerned with the economy than any other issue - by a wide margin - Romney simply doesn't have any other argument on which to hang a viable presidential campaign.
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In the bad old days when the liberals controlled ALL of the media and the message, this may have worked. But with the Internet and cable the truth comes out and thinking people see what is going on.
Gallup issued a statement just yesterday claiming the unemployment rate actually went UP yo 8.6% and not down.
To President Obama and the Democrats- It may come where you may feel that you may have to compromise on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and want to make a deal in order to move forward with other programs. I implore you not to do it. Hold the line on those issues. It will be political suicide for the Republicans to attempt to convert Social Security to a 401k plan and/or Medicare/Medicaid into a cracker jack insurance plan voucher program. John Q Public takes those programs very, very seriously.
Increase the burden of the Rich to pay for those systems. Increase immigration to back fill the population. There are other ways forward. Hold the line, take care of the people that need those programs the most and the public will not forget it. Make those programs a larger part of your re-election campaign.
For me, preserving Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are some of the reasons I think the Republicans won't make it to the White House because all of them want to flush it down the tubes.
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You mean of course the imbalance caused by 48% of working people PAYING NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX!!! That's what you mean....right, liberal?
In late 2008 early 2009 you could print out all the open engineering jobs on one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. Now under Obama's leadership there are hundreds of open positions!
After suffering through 7 months of layoff because of the short sighted GOP decisions and deregulations that nearly destroyed our economy, things are starting to turn around.
FOUR MORE YEARS FOR OBAMA!!!!
We cannot afford to put in a GOP president! I would hope we learned our lesson after Bush's presidency! Only a fool would think otherwise!
As for the unemployment figures, the US economy is struggling for life in spite of President Obama. His policies has been a disaster. We will all know when the economy turns around when closed businesses reopen and when millions of Americans who have been unable to pay their house payments are back on their feet.
I want a new President.
Lets see, when Obama took office the DOW was in a free fall around 8,000 and it closed at roughly 12,900. That's only an increase of what 60 percent?
When Obama started his first term we were only losing 400-500K jobs per month and now were gaining 240K per month!
If anything I would say Obama deserves a second term when you consider how much progress has been made cleaning up from 8 years of total GOP incompetence!
Yopu ask what has he done to help matters. Well he has defeated the obstructionist do nothing GOP to lead this recovery! That is what leadership is all about! We need to get rid of the obstructionist house leadership so we can complete the recovery.
Please join us in voting straight democratic ticket so we can get rid of corruption in congress!
The point being that President Obama had a working model of how to come out of a recession in what President Reagan did, and he ignored it. President Obama decided to experiment on his own, and it has resulted in extending the economic downturn and extending the recession. We are crawling out of this recession at a snails pace, and it is in spite of President Obama's failed policies. I want a new President. I will leave it there.
Seems as if robbie wants to compare peaches with kumquats!
And as governor Reagan was the biggest spender the state had seen in many many decades. And even as President, he ramped up spending heavily, after campaigning to control it. Even his own people acknowledged spending control was a falacy. Plus he raised taxes repeatedly as Prez, compromised willingly with Dems, saved Social Security after campaigning to slash entitlements, bulked up the size of government after campaigning to reduce it, signed an abortion rights bill, and pushed his recession deeper in his 2nd year! So that's the model you want Obama to follow???
As I said the last time you posted this, tell us what GOP'r would even vote for a guy like that today??? Then you'll know how his "model" will be received by a Congress with an approval rating barely higher than the unemployment numbers.
If you don't like it move leave I will stand with my brothers and if the numbers keep getting better then tough for you live with.
I have had enough of your hate to last me a lifetime.