American Optimism Makes a Comeback
By David Paul KuhnAmericans' attitude about the nation's future has steadily recovered in recent weeks. Happy days are not yet here again. But from the course of the country to the economy, polls show the public's mood is decidedly better now than at any point in the past year.
The public's satisfaction with the direction of the country is the highest it has been since April 2007, according to Gallup tracking. Only 26 percent of Americans say they are satisfied today. But a mere 15 percent expressed satisfaction in mid-February. A third of Americans now believe the economy is improving, twice the portion who were optimistic in mid-January.
Americans now seem to believe that the worst is behind them. A slim majority of Americans, 52 percent, agreed that the U.S. economy has stabilized. Last month hardly more than a third said the same. Pessimism has also dwindled. Today, only 36 percent of the public believe the worst is yet to come. Last month, 57 percent said the same, according to Ipsos/McClatchy polls.
A CBS News/New York Times poll reported last week that only 39 percent of Americans "feel things in this country are generally going in the right direction." While still low, that's the highest "right direction" result since February 2005. Rasmussen polling records a similar trend, finding that more Americans believe that the nation is heading in the right direction than any time since 2004. Consumer confidence has also reached its highest point in the past year, according to Gallup.
More at the link, of course, but the gist of it is that while we have a ways to go, American confidence is definitely trending upwards. Which also means that the constant right-wing message "Socialist Marxist Fascist Terrorist Teleprompter Pizza Handshake Bow Bow Teabag Teabag Teabag ObamaFail ObamaFail ObamaFail" isn't getting a lot of traction outside of the so-called liberal media.
Sorry, Mandy, Pamela, Little Joey, and the rest of you wingnuts. The old tricks of whipping up fear and outrage over trivia just don't seem to be working anymore.
I know you wanted Obama to fail, so the fact that Americans are more confident now after one quarter of an Obama Presidency probably makes you just sick with rage. So sorry. But, then again, sick with rage seems to be your default condition anyway, so no great loss.
2 comments:
So they're going to default to shouting about me and my wife again. It's their fall-back, failsafe position. If they can't attack Obama and gain momentum, you just know they're gonna attack "the gay".
Well, or science in schools. There's always that.
What frightens me are the numbers quoted as believing that "the worst is behind us" and "the American economy has stabilized". I don't believe either of these things are even remotely true, and if I'm right, there's going to be a huge Republican-exploitable backlash against Obama when things continue to go downhill. The idea that it's going to TAKE TIME for the economy to be fixed -- that nobody can do it overnight -- doesn't seem to have much traction either.
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