Has caused some to think that the are worse off even though it is true. Timing is everything and 2014 has had many discussions on how everyone's pay has gone down. Hear it enough and it sticks and the President is always blamed even if it is not true or fair.

Every station, every channel, every newspaper. Lies constantly repeated until they are believed.

... the continuous propaganda promulgated by a complicit and lazy corporate media.


Media consolidation insures that any objective news will drowned out by their noise.

attacking Obama for pro-wealthy policies while ignoring the fact that the ReTHUG House blocked every progressive vote

President Obama has seemed to think at every possible juncture that people are going to be so enamored of his accomplishments that it all will speak for itself and will rise above the din of lies and anger.

It doesn't help that he has spent too much time trying to let people know how bipartisan he is or is trying to be rather than drawing clear lines between what he wants and what Republicans want (assuming those lines actually exist which on some matters and issues it's not so obvious).

But you have to be a blithering idiot to argue things haven't improved since. 12/08.

Under Clinton, things improved a lot. That was less a function of Bill himself and more of having a Democratic congress with actual progressives in it that were still willing to stand up for traditional Democratic values. Also a slightly (only slightly) less batshit group of Republicans.

Now the change has been difficult for many who aren't political or news junkies to see or understand. Much of what has improved is buried deep in the weeds.

It started to suck in 2000 right after Y2K b.s.

As for today, I think it goes back to the perception is reality. Do you feel better off?

by hiring on so many people responsible for digging the whole in the first place, especially from a financial/economic policy perspective.

but that isn't the case now.

There is still repug obstructionism but with executive orders and other measures the president has turned the page on trying to work with "just vote no to everything bunch" — and you might want to turn the pages on your calendar.

The degree to which they throw everything they have out there....the amount of time they spent with them or their surrogates yelling and screaming so far outweighs the President fighting back. Or even the number of Democratic surrogates out there and their level of fighting back.

Yeah, it's better than his first time but it's still woefully inadequate. The question is not about what he has done or didn't do. It's why don't more people appreciate it. And whether it was during his "bipartisan love fest" of his first term, or his second term where he's used his position with a little more vigor, the public relations game on our side is pure shit. It's not Obama's fault himself (although I don't think he's great at the PR game by any stretch of the imagination) and largely the piss poor organization and media game of the party as a whole, but the effect is the same.

It would certainly help if there was a major nationwide television, mail and internet advertising effort to promote economic successes.

Instead, in Colorado anyway, all we are getting is an insipid message about contraception as the main reason to return Mark Udall to the U.S. Senate.

If Democrats like Udall lose it is going to be because they are talking to us like we are shallow idiots.

Sorry, Democrats, but going primarily with cultural 'wedge issues' instead of crowing about how things have gotten better is a prescription for losing.

Really, there ought to be a 30 second ad about the decline in the unemployment rate and the declining deficit and how that is because of Democrats on every TV station and web site from now until November 4.

this administration. The President himself needs to do more speeches like he gave yesterday at Northwestern and tout his administrations accomplishments. They need to say that we can do more and even better if you GOTV and give us back the House and a majority in the Senate.

I'm sorry but I don't hear that kind of talk from the Dems. Instead there are Dems around the country running away from the President instead of embracing his accomplishments and trying to tag on to his coattails.

If the Dems lose the Senate - they only have themselves to blame.

but they are buying the idea that their rights and privacy have been eroded.

The Republicans have portrayed the Democratic party as the entrenched establishment and it is working really well.

Elections have a funny sense of finality.

you have programmed the "victims" to your agenda.

Their daily talking points for their vast media coverage has had more of an impact than we realized. Most people don't actually sit down and listen to the news, they catch bits and pieces, so if they are hearing/reading the same points over and over again, those points are stored in the recesses of their minds. They don't even have to work at it.

Add to that, the Democrats have not been touting Obama's accomplishments and should be ashamed. Many of them are no better than a Republican.

Not one of these dopes said "But what are the real numbers" when Bush was president. Now it's all about the "real Unemployment" number (somewhere around 20% in their minds). They also only mention the bad things. None of them can ever look at anything President Obama does as being a good thing. I find that the most bizarre thing ever. It's like they only want this country to suffer. Nothing can ever get better because Barack Obama is President. That is BIZARRE to me.

And sadly, some Democrats (including some on this site) play right along in that.

All good news is really bad news.

People's income is down and everyone knows it.

but with globalization competition it is very difficult to do it. Corporations just go off shore.

Repubs believe Obama is the anti-Christ. He is a Manchurian Socialist out to destroy this nation. He wants to take their guns. He wants to bankrupt the country with his uncontrolled spending. He is a dictator that does not believe in our Constitution. He is disrespectful of our military. Al Sharpton is one of his advisers, etc, etc.

'To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. In the beginning there is the understanding, this understanding uses propaganda as a tool to find those men, that shall turn understanding into politics. Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. Those are found in other circumstances, I find them when thinking at my desk, but not in the meeting hall.'

'If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.'

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels

They tend to overshadow much of the change the president has striven for.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts

at the good old "Democratic"Underground who are embarked on the exact same endeavor.