Obama's Proposal Is New Electoral Challenge

It is not easy being President Barack Obama. As the Spanish newspaper El País reminds us, no American president has been reelected with unemployment above 6 percent (it is currently at 9 percent), with the exception of Reagan in his first term, but that situation was different. And it is still 14 months until Obama seeks reelection.

Constrained by the Republicans because of the shrieking of the tea party, Obama presented a consistent program to stimulate the economy and create jobs. And he called on Congress to act responsibly, repeating the motto, “Approve this package, now!” Then, he turned to the country to sell the measures to the Americans. The plan to reduce payroll taxes for employees and employers and the federal investments in infrastructure were well received by economists. Analysts quoted by the New York Times estimate that the project will be able to — if approved by Congress — generate 100 to 150 thousand jobs per month in 2012. Only 40 thousand monthly jobs have come to be created since April, increasing worries of a double-dip recession.

But this is not enough to lessen the pressure on the Oval Office. The Republicans have fallen again into their confrontational stance when informed that the package of $447 billion will have to be financed by an increase in the tax burden on the rich — anathema for them and the tea party. To complicate matters, the president’s disapproval ratings have reached a record level of 55 percent, according to CNN. And census data indicates that the number of Americans in poverty reached 15 percent of the population in the last year — a figure unheard of since 1993. That’s 46 million people, the biggest number in 52 years. And that’s not even mentioning the electoral disaster: A barely-known Republican defeated a Democrat in New York, in Queens, in a bid to fill a vacant seat in the House of Representatives. The result was presented as a referendum of the Obama government by the Republicans, who came alive during the internal campaign to select their candidate. The feeling is that the president and the opposition live in a permanent state of combat, when they need to act rapidly to resolve immediate problems with unemployment, poverty, health care, etc. Because of this, the verdict on politicians and of parties is dire. For Democratic strategists, the declaration in the New York Times of Linda Goldberg, 61 years old, after voting in Queens was terrible: “I am a registered Democrat, I have always been a registered Democrat, I come from a family of Democrats — and I hate to say this, I voted Republican. I need to send a message to the president that he’s not doing a very good job. Our economy is horrible. People are scared.”

If the internal situation is unfavorable, the external is no better: The Euro is in crisis and the European Union divided over how to avoid default in the weakest countries, which would be terrible for the world economy. With few options, Obama waits for Congress to approve his package without disfiguring it. In case that doesn’t happen, it will remain up to him to convince voters that the Republicans are responsible for the difficult state of the country. It is a very difficult task. He will have to rerun the motto of his presidential campaign of 2008: “Yes, we can!”