Although this has been an election season of mediocrity within
the GOP, President Barack Obama should not get too comfortable, for
his road to re-election may not be an easy one.
Although this has been an election season of mediocrity within the GOP, President Barack Obama should not get too comfortable, for his road to re-election may not be an easy one.
With the GOP primary election season starting off with seven run of the mill candidates, and with three primary elections over, two candidates have already waved the white flag including House Representative Michele Bachmann and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman.
Despite the absence of two candidates, there is still not a clear front-runner who the Republican Party will name their candidate in March.
Although former Pennsylvania Governor and two-time presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is leading the pack, so far the races have been slow.
Maybe it’s premature to say that Romney will not blow out the remaining contenders as the road to Super Tuesday progresses, however if the results from both Iowa and New Hampshire are an indication to how the rest of the season will be, then it is going to be a long road to March 5.
If the road to Super Tuesday continues on this path, President Obama may have a good chance of returning to the White House for another term, however he has to hit the streets like he did four years ago.
This month, Obama is wringing in an approval rating of about 48 percent.
This is notably low for a president who is seeking re-election in the fall. In January of 2004 when former president George W. Bush was gearing up for his re-election, his approval rating was about 60 percent.
By no means is this an indicator that president Obama is heading down the road of failure, nor does it suggest that Bush was an outstanding president, which we all know is false; instead it is a guage that Obama needs to go back to his grass roots.
Statistics prove that most presidents who have sought after re-elections have had higher approval ratings the January prior to the vote, but there has been one president who had a low rating and still came out victorious – Bill Clinton.
Under Clinton’s administration the economy was stable, people were living by comfortable means, and the job market was average.
Fast-forward to the Bush era, and all his efforts went to waste.
Arguably Bush is the reason for the hard times this nation is facing now, and Obama is reaping the backlash.
In December the national unemployment rate was 8.5 percent- just about .5 percent lower than the start of 2011.
Despite this decrease, the black community’s unemployment rate continues to grow. At 15.8 percent, it is nearly twice as high as their white counterparts.
With Obama’s Jobs Act not going anywhere, he must now go back to the drawing board and create a plan that will gain the support of both parties and put an overwhelming majority of people back to work.
In 2008, black Americans flooded the polls to elect the first black president, and now he may be losing the support of those who put him in office.
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- Kelcie McCrae, Editor in Chief