The stock market has hit sky-scraping highs, the unemployment rate has dipped to a five-year low and any number of economic statistics new car sales, home prices, consumer spending point to a perked-up economy that is steadily growing. 

But one thing that has changed little is President Barack Obama’s job approval rating, which tumbled over the past year to the anemic 40 percent range and remains stuck near the low point of his administration. 

The chasm is striking, and a worrisome thing for Democrats already facing a tough election year. One of the most reliable barometers of political well-being is the state of the economy. Good times usually bring good tidings; woe to the incumbent and party in the White House when times are tough. In the case of Obama and fellow Democrats, however, there has been a clear disconnect between economic indicators and political popularity. 

Significantly, millions who want to work still can’t find jobs. “People are hunkered down,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank that focuses on how policies affect low- and moderate-income families. “In 1994, well into the turnaround that began the boom years under President Bill Clinton, people remained dissatisfied with the state of the economy, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center. The stock market may be rip-roaring and housing prices may have bounced back strongly, but those gains are illusory for many Americans, who are neither homeowners nor deeply invested in Wall Street. A Pew survey in September showed that more than six in 10 of those polled said the recession had a major impact on their lives and their finances had yet to fully recover. 

Wages for both white- and blue-collar workers have been stagnant for more than a decade, a trend that predates not just Obama’s election but the 2008 global economic crisis. (The only period of broad-based wage and income growth since the early 1970s was a time around the late 1990s under Clinton.) 

Some of the causes technology, globalization are beyond the powers of any president. And many of the remedies Obama has proposed such as more federal spending on education, research and development are strategies aimed at spurring growth in the longer term. 

But even if Obama’s job approval numbers fail to climb, it is highly unlikely that large a number of seats will shift in either direction this November. That has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with politics: A lack of competitive House seats, which only heightens the stakes in the fight for control of the Senate, where the Democratic edge is marginal at best.

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