OPINION:
These four words explain why Democrats have lost the confidence of the American people: jobs, ISIS, Ebola and Obamacare. While seemingly disparate, they all have one very important thing in common: They exist or have been made worse because of liberal Democratic policies and general incompetence, and they’re making Americans less sure of the future for themselves and their children.
After six years of “hope and change,” two recent polls expose the depth of American gloom about the future. In what The Washington Post described as “a stunning indication of the historic uncertainty and pessimism coursing through the public,” an August NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 76 percent of the American people do not feel confident that their children will have a better life than they do.
In September, this newspaper reported that 47 percent of Americans feel less safe than they did prior to Sept. 11. S.A. Miller reported, “That’s more people feeling unsafe than even a year after al Qaeda crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when just 20 percent felt that way. The fear level has spiked dramatically since just last year, when 28 percent of Americans said they didn’t feel safe.”
What changed? The incompetence of the Democrats in charge of this country became more than warnings from conservative columnists, radio talk-show hosts and television commentators — it became reality. Americans are now painfully aware that the liberal obsession with a massive government and all-controlling administrative state not only doesn’t work, it makes all things fail.
In early October when the unemployment rate slid to 5.9 percent, President Obama crowed, “By every economic measure, we are better off now than we were when I took office.” Well, not exactly. For far too long, Mr. Obama’s rhetoric hasn’t matched reality.
According to Zero Hedge, the truth of the matter lies in the collapse of the labor force participation rate, which has dropped to a 36-year low. A record 92.6 million Americans are not in the labor force.
So, for an astounding 92.6 million Americans, no, we are not better off than when Mr. Obama and his Democratic sycophants took office.
On Nov. 15, we have the return of open enrollment for Obamacare. After the debacle of the rollout in October 2013, it seems the administration thought it best to delay this year’s clown-car experience until after the midterm elections. Yet, they couldn’t hide all the news.
The Daily Caller is reporting, according to an analysis by HealthPocket, a nonpartisan health insurance research company, “In its first year, Obamacare hiked health insurance premiums by up to 78 percent, according to a new analysis comparing insurance costs before and after Obamacare.” This after the main Obamacare push centered around the promise that it would save households an average of $2,500. To say nothing of the “you can keep your insurance, your doctor and your hospital” lie.
On the terrorism and national security front, the Democrats seem to think that reality is what happens on television. For months now, we have been assured by Mr. Obama and his administration that we had a plan to “degrade and destroy” the so-called Islamic State. Many political analysts questioned the seriousness of that claim when our military was limited to a few strikes a day, targeting vehicles and specific terrorist individuals.
Now the Pentagon has admitted that Mr. Obama’s pinprick strategy has not worked. According to Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby and reported by The Washington Free Beacon, “U.S. strikes have thus far not degraded [the Islamic State’s] ability to grow its forces.” How does the world’s most powerful military get turned into ineffective, useless theater? Ask the so-called commander in chief.
On the national security front here at home, Ebola has come to our cities, specifically because Mr. Obama has refused to even make the slightest effort to keep it at bay. Once it was here, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s regularly changing protocols, mixed messages and bizarre actions are indicating to the American people that the administration and its agencies are once again winging it.
Case in point: After admitting that Ebola can spread through a sneeze or a cough, the CDC published a poster that explained, in part: “Droplet spread happens when germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person,” according to The New York Post.
Yet just a day after The New York Post reported on the startling admission, the CDC yanked the poster from its website. “The fact sheet was taken off-line, and a link that led to it a day before now sends viewers to a different page with a different message,” sending people to the generic CDC website, reported the newspaper.
With change like this, no wonder the American people have lost hope in the future and feel less safe. It’s certainly a lesson that the liberal administrative state is a prop used by those with no vision and no answers. At the very least, we need more than liberal feel-good slogans from those who ask us to put them in charge of everything that matters.
Tammy Bruce is a radio talk-show host, author and Fox News contributor.
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