Brutal Polls: Americans are Fed Up, Demoralized, and Anticipate Decline

Brutal Polls: Americans are Fed Up, Demoralized, and Anticipate Decline

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall//ColPics/benson.gif Guy Benson | Aug 07, 2014

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Two national opinion polls released over the last two days reflect a deeply frustrated and pessimistic American public. The new NBC/WSJ survey, which tracks President Obama's approval to an all-time low in the series (40/54) and shows a slight Republican edge heading into November's elections, is bursting at the seams with negativity:

(1) Right track/Wrong track is at an abysmal (22/71).

(2) By a 22-point margin, Americans say the country is in a state of decline. On the question of whether people believe that "life for our children's generation will be than it has been for us," respondents said they are "not confident" on that score by nearly a four-to-one margin.

(3) This whole chart:


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(4) On another 'satisfaction' issue set, respondents gave negative marks to the US government's handling of a series of international crises. The most acute dissatisfaction was expressed over the border crisis, with featured a 53-point thumbs-down margin. A majority of Americans said they agreed that, "we do not have the resources to deal with the thousands of children who have entered the country illegally and they should be returned immediately."

A fresh Associated Press poll is just as bleak on virtually every count. Obama's approval is upside down (40/59) overall, and underwater on every single issue polled. He's in the 30's on many of them. His best number is on handling relationships with other countries, at (43/55). Voters split evenly between preferring Republicans or Democrats to control Congress after the elections. Fully one-third of respondents said it doesn't matter either way. Republicans held a "trust" edge on seven of the eight specific issues polled. Noah Rothman's conclusion upon surveying these numbers: "These are awful numbers for incumbent Democrats heading into the fall. And we haven’t even started applying likely voter screens yet." True, but I suspect Pete Wehner's take is more lasting in its relevance:

Whatever the causes–and there are many of them–it can’t be good when there’s such massive dissatisfaction with our political system. For one thing, we have urgent challenges that require a political system that works, that people have confidence in. Beyond that, though, our political system–the extraordinary handiwork of our founding generation–produced what Lincoln called an “inestimable jewel.” It is one of the main reasons we revere our country. Sustained contempt for our political system is corrosive. It undermines our affections for America. And unless it is reversed, it will find increasingly disturbing outlets and end up doing durable damage to the nation we love.

America is in the grips of a crisis of confidence, and most people don't see a light at the end of the tunnel at the moment.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybens...campaign=nl_pm

…In A Handbasket: New Poll Finds Americans Have Grave Opinion About The Future Of This Country

August 6, 2014 by Ben Bullard

More than three quarters of Americans now believe their kids won’t inherit a better life than the lives they themselves enjoy, according to a far-ranging poll released Wednesday that finds aught but bleakness among most Americans’ attitudes on an array of economic and cultural topics.
Findings in the poll, conducted for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, read like a statistical elegy for America, penned by its own inhabitants.
“Two words sum up the mood of the nation: Fed up,” begins NBC – normally among the mainstream media’s most robust water-carriers for the Obama Administration – in its summary of the poll’s revelations:
“Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
“The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.”
The Obama approval rating is an all-time low, by the NBC/WSJ poll’s count, and falls at or near the level of concurrent tracking polls from other outlets. It also closely mirrors former President George W. Bush’s approval rating at the same point in his two-terms presidency.
Across the ideological spectrum, economic concerns seem to drive the malaise. Forty percent of respondents said “someone in their household lost a job in the past five years.” Sixty-four percent indicated they’re still feeling the effects of the “Great Recession” personally. Fifty-seven percent said they were mad enough to “carry a protest sign for a day.”
NBC presented two “word cloud” graphics, each reflecting the most common phrases that Democrats and Republicans would put on their hypothetical protest sign in that scenario. As different as those two word clouds are (and they indeed are very different), the one significant phrase both share in common is “Focus on our own country.”
“This is a bad poll for President Obama, and not a good poll for anybody else,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who helped conduct the survey.

If you’ve still got an appetite for more, you can see the poll’s full results here.

http://personalliberty.com/handbaske...uture-country/

No matter how we feel about the situation failure is not an option. We must refocus and save this country rather than sitting in apathy and despair. To sit and do nothing is to waste our great heritage and make the work of generations before us obsolete. They gave their all for this great country. Can we do anything less?