Obama to talk of job creation and economic growth in three day tour
US President has embarked on a three day tour of Midwestern states.
By Sophie FitzMaurice Published 16 August 2011 18:01
Barack Obama has embarked on a three day bus tour of Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota - the three Midwestern states that he will need to carry if he is to win the 2012 presidential election. As media attention is increasingly focused on Tea Party insurgents such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Obama's approval rating has slipped to 39 per cent - the lowest since he took office.
The debate about America's debt ceiling, and the downgrading of the US credit rating from AAA, has also dominated headlines, although US industrial growth has increased at a greater than expected rate. Obama will campaign in Iowa just days after Rick Perry equated quantitative easing with treason and Michele Bachmann scored 30 per cent in the state's straw poll.
The official website for Obama's re-election says little in the way of policy, but is instead focused on organising grass roots support, as the then Democratic Presidential candidate did to great success in 2009. However, the Tea Party has emulated the sort of bottom up populism that characterised Obamania, with politicians such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann casting themselves as Washington outsiders, much as Obama did two years ago.
Travelling in a shiny black tour bus and looking considerably more grey haired than when he took office, Obama will take a measure of bi-partisanship and national unity to his audiences, criticising the Republicans for sabotaging his deficit plan and appealing to Americans' patriotism to put the economy before political point-scoring. He has referred to the "broken politics" in Washington, and the fact that "some folks in Congress...think that doing something in cooperation with me, or this White House...somehow is bad politics."
Obama will speak to farmers and rural organisation as well as small business owners and schoolchildren. He will discuss ideas for job creation and economic growth, including the creation of an infrastructure bank.
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9 comments
I fear, nobody in the US is listening to him anymore.
Governments don't create sustainable jobs.
@Actionfitz - As an American, I unfortunately can't afford myself the luxury of political self-righteousness when it comes to the 2012 presidential election. The insanity and greed displayed by the GOP in the recent debt-ceiling fight, the state efforts to roll back workers' rights, and their determination to deny LGBTs any human rights whatsoever (among other events) demonstrates that allowing those lunatics anywhere near the levers of power would be an irresponsibility of the highest order.
That said, my current plans to vote for President Obama is like having to eat a whole dung sandwich. I would have preferred a President Bernie Sanders. But voting for Obama is an act that's needed to avoid a far worse national fate.
'Givusajob' is going to be the cry on both sides of the Pond. But only the entrepreneurs out there can create tose jobs.
Jobs are not a human right neither is a roof over your head, but freedom from fear is.
I somehow doubt he'll be able to mobilize the level of support/voter turnout he got when securing his first term.
Unsurprisiing given that he ran as a Democrat but has governed like a Republican.
You can't please everyone Mr Obama, all you've achieved in placating the far right is the alienation of the base of your support.
He may well be the only realistic option for liberals to vote for, especially if some bigoted nut-job like Bachmann gets the Republican Candidacy...
When the only choices are Extreme-Right and Center-Right... If i was American i'd stay at home on election day.
I live here on Martha's Vineyard where the Obamas are presently vacationing and I resent their presence here even thought they are spending lots of money being here. I lost the one job in 2008 I was able to get during a down turn that began in 2006 in the field I worked, the construction industry. I haven't worked in three years.
I have never seen a political party squander a mandate given them by the voters in 2008 faster than the dems did in 2009 and 2010. Right wing America didn't even bother trying to steal the election because the backlash was just too large and too well organized. But it is like we are repeating the 1990s when that other moron Bill Clinton proposed and passed a completely corrupt healthcare plan just like Obama and then lost the midterm elections instead of focusing on creating jobs.
Most of the initial unemployment was high paying construction jobs that then cascaded to the rest of the economy. So when I heard that the Democrats had put only 92 billion infrastructure dollars (roads, bridges, water and sewer construction projects) in the 2009 stimulus bill I got on the phone to all my reps and senators who I know personally and demanded that they get that number up to 500 billion then and 500 billion more in a couple of years. But nothing materialized. What did emerge was a stimulus package that was mostly political pay back to Obama's and the dems buddies in the states, tax cuts across the board and a piss pot of alternative energy.
92 billion in infrastructure between 50 states is fuck all when corrupt American officials wait until bridges fall down and kill people before they rebuild. Water and sewer in America is 650 billion dollars behind. Americans are still drinking water delivered to them in lead pipes and dumping raw sewage and chemical pollution into waterways, drinking water sources and into the sea. America has become a crumbing bad joke.
And I know what your going to say: 'But the economy exploded under Bill Clinton in the 1990s' but in reality the economy improved in the 1990s because of a democrat, Tip O'Neil, my former congressman and a republican President, H.W. Bush who put hundreds of billions of infrastructure projects into play that then stimulated the economy. Bill Clinton was quite simply a bimbo who knew how to take credit for other people's hard work. Granted most of the heavy lifting was done by Tip O'Neil and H.W got his pals no bid contracts on the Big Dig in Boston and H.W.'s pals raped the treasury and still built a substandard project in Boston but the construction wages made the rest of the economy roar.
Barrack Obama is just another well spoken bimbo just like Clinton who has blown a perfectly good mandate, a mandate you are lucky to see once a generation and who now needs to be shown the door. The fact that Obama and the dems are now speaking the language of Tip O'Neil is too little too late.
No doubt, more useless rhetoric from a delusional and failed one term President.
All the numbers show 0bummer's massive run up of spending in 3 yrs & the Dem Senate not having a budget for over 1,000 days. U6 is 15% & 0bamacare just shown to be twice the cost-purposely shielded by the White House. He nixed Keystone pipeline & is an anti-colonialist like his wandering father. I think the magic Prez is out.