Who you gonna believe? President Barack Obama or your “lying eyes”?
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That’s the choice the president has given the American people, who strangely seem to put more faith in their lying eyes on at least three issues.
The economy is performing well. President Obama is in Chicago for a fundraiser (what else?) and to speak at Northwestern University, explaining why the economy is actually doing much better than you or your bank account thinks. Good luck with that.
It’s the same message he delivered in his recent 60 Minutes interview: “We’ve had the longest run of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our history. We have seen deficits cut by more than half. Corporate balance sheets are probably the best they’ve been in the last several decades.”
But the public isn’t buying it. An August Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that half of the public believes the country is still in a recession—more than five years after it officially ended.
And a just-released Rasmussen poll of 3,500 likely voters—which is a better gauge of how people will vote—found 65 percent believe the country is headed down the wrong track. That’s up from 63 percent a year ago.
We can defeat ISIS with a limited non-war. Normally, people think that when a country sends fighter jets and cruise missiles to bomb people and buildings in two sovereign nations, not to mention 1,600 troops on the ground, that’s pretty close to what we call a war. Not Obama.
When 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft asked Obama if our actions could be called a “war,” Obama responded: “Well, what I’m saying is that we are assisting Iraq in a very real battle that’s taking place on their soil, with their troops. But we are providing air support.”
That has to be a little confusing to the public, especially since the major media—CNN, NPR, Time, Fox News, among others, not to mention some generals—have been calling it a war.
Perhaps the more important issue is where this all goes. Obama thinks he can win this non-war with only boots in the air, and he and his team keep stressing that point. But the public seems to disagree completely. In a new Fox News poll, 58 percent think it will take ground troops to defeat ISIS, while only 23 percent think airstrikes will do the job.
Obamacare is working. At the Congressional Black Caucus Awards Dinner on Sunday, Obama explained: “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we’ve seen a 26 percent decline in the uninsured rate in America. … And, by the way, the cost of health care isn’t going up as fast anymore either. Everybody was predicting this was all going to be so expensive. We’ve saved $800 billion in Medicare because of the work that we’ve done—slowing the cost, improving quality, and improving access.”
The public has a less flattering impression. In a recent Independent Women’s Forum poll, 54 percent disapprove of Obamacare—a figure that has been pretty stable for months—versus 43 percent who approve. But the “intensity” paints a bleaker picture for the president: 45 percent strongly disapprove versus only 25 percent who strongly approve.
When we turn to those who have actually been affected by Obamacare, 60 percent say that impact was negative. And the reasons are telling: 45 percent faced higher costs and premiums, 13 percent had poor or reduced coverage, and 10 percent complained of a loss of doctors. All of which seem to contradict Obama’s claims of a better, more-affordable health care system.
Whether it’s the economy, the war against ISIS or Obamacare, Obama and his mouthpieces keep pushing a narrative that the large majority of voters know isn’t true. And now he and his administration are claiming that the Ebola crisis is under control, even as news stories continue to emerge implying just the opposite. In short, most of us are choosing to believe our “lying eyes.”