Thursday, October 30, 2014

Real Issues

From USA Today:
"Poll: High anxiety, low expectations as election nears"

As Election Day nears, America is the Land of the Fearful. Voters are rattled by the Ebola virus, braced for years of conflict against the terrorist group Islamic State and still worried about jobs, a nationwide USA TODAY Poll finds. Two-thirds say the nation faces more challenging problems than usual; one in four call them the biggest problems of their lifetimes. And many lack confidence in the government to address them. "There's this cornucopia of icky that's going on right now," says Laurie DeShano, 38, of Bay City, Mich., an instructor at Saginaw Valley State University who was among those surveyed. She cites concerns ranging from ISIS – "We're absolutely in the cross hairs" – to the out-sized influence of special interests in American politics. "Just to be painfully honest, it's obvious we're quite off track," says Mike Trujillo, 46, an emergency-room physician from Miami. "I never thought the country would be going in this direction, not in my wildest dreams." President Obama's approval rating is a so-so 44%, and neither party is broadly trusted to handle the big issues ahead. By significant margins, those surveyed prefer congressional Republicans when it comes to dealing with the economy and ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria. By double-digits, they say congressional Democrats would do a better job in handling income inequality and social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. On dealing with the Ebola virus, one in five volunteer that they don't trust either one. But the bottom line seems to be that the downbeat mood of the electorate is favoring the GOP, whose backers are more enthusiastic about voting and animated by their opposition to Obama.
At stake in Tuesday's election are 36 Senate seats, all 435 House seats and 36 governorships as well as state ballot measures that would, among other things, restrict abortion and decriminalize marijuana.  Only a third of those surveyed say they are generally satisfied with how things are going in the United States. That's a more optimistic outlook than in the last midterm election, in 2010, when the unemployment rate had risen to 9.8% and the debate over the Affordable Care Act had caught fire. Today's mood is akin to those during turbulent midterms in 1994 and 2006. In those elections, the party that held the White House suffered setbacks severe enough to cost them control of the House of Representatives. With a Democrat in the White House now, Republicans already won a majority in the House four years ago. The biggest question for this election night is whether Democrats will be able to keep control of the Senate. Half of likely voters say the president doesn't weigh in their vote for Congress. But among those who call Obama a factor, by 2-1 they say they are casting a vote against him, not for him.  "It's a tough job...but this is not the best we've had, that's for sure," says Elizabeth Johnson, 58, a pharmacist from Morgantown, W.Va. "The president is not very competent and the people he's chosen are not very competent." More than four in 10 of those polled agreed.The challenge for Obama's fellow Democrats is to turn out their supporters in the midterm election, when fewer people vote and those who do are more likely to be white, older and conservative -- that is, more likely to support Republicans. That is proving to be difficult, although Democrats say they have honed field operations and turn-out-the-vote efforts. African-American participation has dipped only slightly, from 13% of the electorate in 2012 to 12% of the likely-voter sample in the new survey.

• An uncertain economy. The top priority for congressional action next year is job creation, cited by 29% of those surveyed. Despite unemployment that has declined to 5.9% and an economy that grew by a healthy 3.5% in the third quarter of the year, economic anxiety forged in the Great Recession continues to cast a cloud.
A long battle against ISIS. Six in 10 predict the United States will have to deal with the threat from Islamic State well past the time Obama's second term ends in two years. Four in 10 say it will stretch more than five years.
The threat from Ebola . Four in 10 say a major outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States is very or somewhat likely over the next year, although public-health experts call that prospect remote at best. More than one in 10 say it's very or somewhat likely someone in their family will contract Ebola.
Four in 10 say they don't trust the federal government to handle the Ebola threat.


^ While both sides don't seem to be doing a good job it is now the lesser of two evils. Obama and those officials that support him have shown they are incompetent in nearly every issue they have touched (ie  Obamacare, the VA scandal, Benghazi, the two Secret Service scandals, Ebola, ISIS, creating full-time, benefitted jobs, dealing with Russia, supporting our allies (ie Israel, the Ukraine, etc), the government shutdown.) The list goes on and includes both domestic and international affairs. Some Presidents (like LBJ) focused their attention on domestic issues and did great things while failing in international issues and caused more harm then good (ie Vietnam.) The fact the LBJ showed some sense in dealing with certain issues makes him a stronger President than Obama who has shown time and again that he is all talk and no good, concrete action. ^


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/10/30/usa-today-poll-high-anxiety-low-expectations/18118403/

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