During an interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama claims we are not better off than we were four years ago. During the 1980 debates Ronald Reagan asked this specific question and it became a turning point for his campaign. Now President Obama just hands it to his political opponents. Stephanopoulos asked, “There’s so many people who simply don’t think they’re better off than they were four years ago. How do you convince them that they are?” Obama responded, “Well, I don’t think they’re better off than they were four years ago. They’re not better off than they were before Lehman’s collapse, before the financial crisis, before this extraordinary recession that we’re going through. I think that what we’ve seen is that we’ve been able to make steady progress to stabilize the economy, but the unemployment rate is still way too high. And that’s why it’s so critical for us to make sure that we are taking every action we can take to put people back to work.”
Barack Obama admitting we are not better off now;
Candidate Ronald Reagan asking “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” during the 1980 presidential debates.