Tough Love for Obama

[babylonsister]

Very interesting. These women have a more realistic sense of what's going on than a lot of people, including me, give them credit for.

Tough Love for Obama
Posted on Sep 22, 2010

By Ruth Marcus


The Wal-Mart Moms were pessimistic, bordering on despondent, about the state of the country. Like, well, moms dealing with bickering children, they were exasperated by Washington lawmakers seemingly incapable of learning to get along.

And they were surprisingly understanding about the president’s plight. Even those who did not vote for Barack Obama shied away from blaming him for the current state of affairs. If anything, they said they felt sorry for him.

I spent a fascinating evening last week listening via video hookup to focus groups, 30 women in all, in three battleground states: Pennsylvania, Missouri and Colorado. These were, literally, Wal-Mart shoppers—the retail giant sponsored the discussions—screened to exclude committed partisans of the left or right and split evenly between 2008 supporters of Obama and John McCain.

These were homemakers and teachers, dental assistants and billing managers. Most had at least some college education. All made less than $100,000 annually, most closer to $50,000, and for many the recession had hit painfully close, with husbands who had lost jobs and homes foreclosed or underwater.

All were likely to vote in November, although despite the intensity of the Senate races in their states, they were largely oblivious to the candidates. For all the partisan attacks lobbed at the Democratic and Republican congressional leadership, they knew little about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even less about Minority Leader John Boehner.

If I were a member of Congress listening to these women, I would have been horrified by their perception of lawmakers as elitists disconnected from—indeed, uninterested in—their concerns.

If I were a member of Congress up for re-election I would have been frightened by their hostility.

If I were the president, I would have felt relieved. Not great, but relieved.


more...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tough_love_for_obama_20100922/

[stray cat]

1. Obama as child?

[vaberella]

2. Once again...the real problem. There is a problem communicating to the constituency.

The real situation is the fact that Obama can't speak to everyone individually. He wasn't hired to be a micromanager, he's a macromanager. And as such it's difficult to speak to these people. But what you hear is that they understand him and realize he can't do this. What's unfortunate is that he's the only one offering reassurance and trying to give a plan. While his own team of Congress men and women fail to communicate to the people properly which would have been able to mitigate the communication/language gap.

[impik]

3. Nothing that i've seen around here can be called "tough love" or any other kind of love

But this is indeed an interesting post.

[Phx_Dem]

4. Their first mistake was interviewing people who shop at Walmart.

Seriously. Have you ever been to Walmart?

[WI_DEM]

5. Walmart moms? well maybe they could help their country by not buying cheap foreign made products