Anxious and angry, Americans are not in a congratulatory mood. That’s bad news for US President Barack Obama and his Democratic party.
After winning a landmark healthcare overhaul earlier this year, Obama now stands on the brink of seeing Congress approve the most far-reaching overhaul of Wall Street regulations since the 1930s.
Democrats aim to put it on his desk by July 4.
Yet with the economy still wobbly and the stock market retreating, Americans remain nervous about the possibility of a double-dip recession. They have seen few concrete benefits yet from the slow-to-unfold health care law. Likewise, it may be some time before Obama can point to results from the advancing legislation to rewrite the rules that govern Wall Street.
Senate passage last week of the financial overhaul bill was “another big win for him. But the problem is that, in terms of his standing in the eyes of the public, both these enormously far-reaching pieces of legislation are going to take quite a while to play out and to begin to affect the lives of Americans,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
In the meantime, there’s plenty for people to worry about.
Despite signs of a fledgling corporate recovery, unemployment seems stuck at just under 10 percent. Home foreclosures continue to rise. Despite a rebound on Friday, US stocks have fallen around 10 percent in just the last month, signaling a correction to the bull market that began in March last year.
Riots in Athens and strikes in Spain are rattling world markets.
Not to mention the millions of gallons of crude oil that continue to gush into the Gulf of Mexico from a blown out well, threatening the environment and jobs in the region.
As a result, Americans are in a sour mood and the polls reflect that.
Just 35 percent surveyed this month say the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest measured by the AP-GfK survey since a week before Obama took office in January last year. His approval rating remains at 49 percent, as low as it has been since he became president.
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