Blogging Obama 1

The talking heads have a very different sense of what the president has been up to than the people in the trenches, the workers and homeowners dealing with the economic fallout. On both ABC and CBS, for instance, they painted a picture of an American public skeptical of the Obama program — when the polling shows a very different story.

The ABC/Washington Post poll issued today, for instance, showed large majorities backing the Obama stimulus package and saying it is likely to make things better (64 percent support it, 58 percent believe it will help and 62 percent believe it will help locally, while just a quarter say it will make things worse).

Another ABC/Washington Post poll found that about two thirds of Americans support the president’s plans to “75 billion dollars to provide refinancing assistance to homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure on their mortgages” — even with the alleged populist wildfire started by a rant on CNBC.

Other polls have given the president a 60 percent approval rating with most Americans saying they trust his handling of the economy.

So, the job tonight is not to convince the American people to trust him, but to explain to Americans exactly what to expect as we move forward, to not raise expectations and push for wide-ranging reforms — new regulations of the economy (banks in particular), promotion of new technologies, etc.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet