The unemployment rate in Elkhart, Ind. went from 22% to 4%. Yet voters don't give Pres. Obama credit

[bigtree]

Last edited Tue Dec 27, 2016, 02:10 PM - Edit history (1)

AlanaSemuels @AlanaSemuels
The unemployment rate in Elkhart, Ind. went from 22% to 4%. Yet voters don't give Obama credit for a recovery. Why?

It’s Not About the Economy
In an increasingly polarized country, even economic progress can’t get voters to abandon their partisan allegiance.

___ Elkhart’s unemployment rate, which had reached a high of 22 percent in March of 2009, is now at 3.9 percent. Hiring signs dot the doors of the Wal-Mart, the McDonald’s, and the Long John Silver’s. The RV industry makes 65 percent of its vehicles in Elkhart, and the industry is producing a record number of vehicles, which is creating a lot of jobs in this frosty town in northern Indiana.

“America’s economy is not just better than it was eight years ago--it is the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” President Obama said during a visit to Elkhart in June, in which he touted the economic recovery. (Elkhart was also the first place outside Washington he visited as president, in 2009.) “Elkhart would not have come this far--if we hadn’t made a series of smart decisions, my administration, a cooperative Congress--decisions we made together early on.”

But despite the decisions that the Obama administration made that might have helped Elkhart, many people here have a strong dislike of Obama, who presided over an economic recovery in which the unemployment rate fell nationally to 4.6 percent from a high of 10 percent in October 2009. They say it’s not Obama who is responsible for the city or the country’s economic progress, and furthermore, that the economy won’t truly start to improve until President-elect Donald Trump takes office...

Elkhart is a case study in how Democrats lost the 2016 elections despite the economic resurgence the country experienced under Obama. It shows how, in an increasingly polarized country, an improving economy is not enough to get Republicans to vote for Democrats, in part because they don’t give Democrats any credit for fixing the economy. Gallup, for instance, found that while just 16 percent of Republicans said they thought the economy was getting better in the week leading up to the election, 49 percent said they thought it was getting better in the week after the election. And in a Pew poll in 2015, one in three Republicans said the economy wasn’t recovering at all, while just 7 percent of Democrats said that. This bias is true for Democrats, too, of course. Before the election, according to the Gallup poll, 35 percent thought the economy was getting worse, while after the election, 47 percent of Democrats thought that...


read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/its-not-the-economy-stupid/511634/

[unblock]

1. a case study in how effective propaganda can be these days.

if obama were a republican, foxnews and rush limbaugh would have been hailed as the second coming of saint ronnie, cnn and the networks would be talking about his wild success and popularity, and places like elkhart would be pining for a repeal of presidential term limits.

[Chipper Chat]

2. Fox News has done its job.

Indiana's bromance with Trump coupled with an incredibly weak state democratic party spelled defeat for Hillary (who didn't visit the state once during the campaign). I work in Elkhart. Obama is actually appreciated here especially among young people. It would be nice if some of our kids stayed in the state but due to the oppressive rightwing ideology here they bolt at 18 for greener pastures making Hoosierland redder and redder every day.

[Jacob Boehme]

3. Yes, and that is why well-crafted propaganda works so damn completely! n/t

[AmericanActivist]

4. Amazing! How out of touch with factual information they are. Partly because when

the MSM is controlled by the 1% they control all the channels and therefore all the "truth" but also because there are none so blind as those who will not see.

[Jamaal510]

5. Now watch Trump

try to take credit for that once he's sworn in.

[uponit7771]

6. nope... not about race at all / sarcasm. Obama wasn't running against an overt racist