Posted on 05/16/2014 7:14:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
According to a Fox News survey released on Wednesday, Obamas approval rating stands at 45 percent among all registered voters. However, among black voters, Obamas job approval soars to 86 percent.
Given Obamas devastating impact on black Americans, this is even more confounding than the whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Obamas election, no doubt, generated considerable ethnic pride. Seeing a black man (or, precisely, a half-black man) inaugurated was a truly exceptional milestone for all Americans black and otherwise.
But Obama reached the Oval Office nearly five years and four months ago. Since then, his performance should have dimmed his halo among blacks, especially considering how much they have suffered on his watch.
When Obama entered office on January 20, 2009, U.S. unemployment stood at 7.8 percent. By April 2014, that Bureau of Labor Statistics figure had fallen to 6.3 percent a modest improvement. Among blacks overall, joblessness dropped, though less significantly from 12.7 to 11.6 percent. But for blacks aged 16 to 19, unemployment grew from 35.3 to 36.8 percent.
Obamas somewhat more sanguine unemployment numbers, such as they are, seem less about job growth and more about people simply abandoning the workforce whereupon they conveniently exit the unemployment rate. The more revealing labor-force-participation rate thus fell from 65.7 percent in January 2009 to 62.8 percent last month, a portrait of disengagement last witnessed in March 1978. For black adults, that number slipped from 63.2 to 60.9 percent. While 29.6 percent of blacks aged 16 to 19 were working when Obama took power, only 27.9 percent were employed last month.
Poverty has increased under Obama. Overall, 14.3 percent of Americans were below the poverty line in January 2009, versus 15.0 percent in 2012, according to the latest available data from the Census Bureaus Current Population Survey. Similarly, the share of black Americans living in poverty expanded from 25.8 to 27.2 percent.
Inflation-adjusted median household income fell across America, from $53,285 in 2009 to $51,017 in 2012, the most recent Census Bureau data indicate. Blacks slid, too, from $34,880 to $33,321 and at a much lower income level.
Americas population of food-stamp recipients soared overall from 32,889,000 in 2009 to 46,022,000 in 2012, the latest Agriculture Department statistics show. For blacks, the analogous numbers are 7,393,000 when Obama arrived to 10,955,000 in 2012.
In spite of $275 billion in housing-market bailouts that Obama unveiled in his first month in office, home ownership actually has waned. In the first quarter of 2009, 67.3 percent of Americans owned homes. By 1Q 2014, that Census Bureau figure was 64.8 percent. Meanwhile, black home ownership during this interval sagged from 46.1 to 43.3 percent.
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In light of this dismal record, about the best that Obama can say to black Americans is, Nothing personal. Obamas focus on resentment and redistribution rather than robust growth has failed the entire country, not just black folks.
Also, these sad statistics do not capture the intangible humiliation of watching Americas first black president expose himself as a lazy, incompetent liar. This inescapable truth is confirmed by Obamas eerily detached demeanor, his& 169 rounds of golf in office, his scores of skipped intelligence briefings, his unforgivable absence from the Situation Room during the Benghazi massacre, and his burgeoning scandals from Fast and Furious to the IRSs persecution of conservative groups to the 40 or more war heroes who died without medical care while languishing on secret Veterans Affairs wait lists. And remember, Obamas oft-repeated If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it promise was PolitiFacts 2013 Lie of the Year.
Save for Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who frequently addresses black audiences, few Republicans bother to share these facts with black voters. Republicans should early and often. These data are toxic, and the GOPs growth-and-prosperity antidote is just what black Americans need.
Republicans should ask black voters this question: What has Obama done for you lately?
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Everybody is worse off under Obama
Worse off is the Obama Admin’s self proclaimed “New Normal”
None so blind . . .
I am surprised it is at 86% - wasn’t it 95% originally?
I heard a black man in Detroit going to a GOP conferance say “Maybe we should stop thinking we have to vote Democrat because we’re poor and wonder if maybe we’re poor because we vote Democrat”
Obama’s popularity among blacks isn’t surprising at all. Let’s call it what it is: racism.
They’re black. He’s black. What’s not to like?
I suppose a lot of Blacks like being paid to not work and they get nifty free Obama Phones too
But but but, they all feel better now that they have a pResident. A black pResident of by and for black liberals.
Since a vast majority of blacks are liberal this case is closed, blacks are much better of today than they were in 2008.
So I guess Deroy is mistaken.
Stupid is as Stupid does.
They think fewer people getting into "job lock" is a good thing. They measure government success by how many people are enjoying free things provided by the government.
His cronies are doing fine, as are those who prefer "free" money to working for a living. I think there is also a substantial segment that cheers when its unjustified anger is amplified by Obama's remarks. Black racists get a free pass, arguably they are better off under Obama.
As long as everyone else is worse off, who cares?
That’s the mentality of the Left.
What goes around..
86% approval rating by AA. No wonder Obama stays above 40%
I would like to see how Obama does with hispanics , asians.
I bet if you factored out the black bias Obama would be at 35%
Well, you’re close...
If the people they want to get back at are worse off,
then it doesn’t matter if others get caught up in the worse off status as well.
That’s the ugly side of base human nature. Humans tend to be more interested in bringing others down than lifting themselves up.
And leftists exhibit the worst of this - they claim to want to help people, but their main agenda is cutting off the successful at the knees.
Miserable people must surround themselves with other miserable people, then they’re happy.
Definition of insanity comes to mind. 2012 repeat of 2008?
Ø is but a symptom!
But they get to hate Whitey even more and justify their hatred so that’s the shizzle. The implication of this article is that they would contemplate and evaluate numbers (flawed from the premise of historical experience and flawed from the premise of them being too unwhatever to have photo ID) and that is just plain silly wrong.
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