FLandWVMIKE wrote:
If BO would become a lame duck president, I believe a lot of liberals, would think, "Oh my God, what have we done ?".
I copied and pasted this article from USAToday.
Who's to blame?
The biggest culprits in Pew's surveys were Congress, which was blamed "`a lot" by 62% of respondents for middle-class decline, and banks at 54%. More people placed a lot of blame on the George W. Bush administration (44%) than President Obama (34%). Only 8% said the middle class should primarily blame itself for its falling prospects.
Pew said neither the president nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney has "sealed the deal" with middle-class voters, but its respondents said Obama's policies were better for the middle class than Romney's by a 52% to 42% margin.
The numbers are consistent with other polling and with data reported by the Federal Reserve and other agencies.
The Federal Reserve said in June that the financial crisis had wiped out middle-class gains in net worth since 1992, thanks mostly to a $7 trillion post-crash decline in home equity, while wealthier households quickly recovered their lost wealth as stock markets recovered. Pew says the median household net worth for middle-income families is 2.3% higher, about $2,100, than in 1983, after taking inflation into account, while the wealth of upper-income households climbed 87% to $574,788.
"What we find in our surveys is pretty much exactly that," said Jim Clifton, chairman of the Gallup Organization, which does public-opinion research for clients, including USA TODAY. "Both sides of the political aisle agree the middle class is getting hollowed out."