By: Chairman Matt Pinnell

Stephanie Cutter: "By any measurement, the country has moved forward from where we were, from what we inherited four years ago." (MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," 9/3/12)

With a successful RNC Convention behind us, it's now the Democrats' turn. So far, not so good for Democrats.

On the Sunday morning talk circuit, Team Obama couldn't come up with a good answer to the “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” question. The question has become the central question of the campaign, and thanks to Republican repetition and Democratic disagreements it's working wonders for us right now. Take this zinger, for example: “The president can say a lot of things, and he will, but he can’t tell you that you’re better off,” Paul Ryan said Monday during a pre-convention campaign visit to North Carolina. “Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now.”

Axelrod and Plouffe wouldn’t say if we are better off and Democratic Governors' Association Chair Martin O’Malley delivered a firm “no." Team Obama is now in damage control mode trying to clean up on the central question of the campaign. Despite the 7 in 10 Americans who disagree, yesterday Stephanie Cutter, Brad Woodhouse, Antonio Villaraigosa and a flip-flopping Martin O’Malley said our country is somehow better off "by any measurement"…really? Clearly the answers from just a day prior from O’Malley and other top Democrats were deemed unacceptable.

On Monday in a video asking “Are you better off?” the RNC spliced clips of Obama talking in 2008 about the struggling economy, dependence on foreign oil and infrastructure side-by-side with that him talking about the exact same challenges in 2012. It's a brilliant ad, and devastating to Team Obama, because nothing is more powerful than using a politicians own words against them. Remember, the President himself said it would be a one-term proposition if he couldn't turn this economy around. He hasn't...by any measurement.

Since President Obama took office, the nation has lost 316,000 jobs and the unemployment rate has remained above eight percent for 42 straight months, a post WWII record. 23.6 million Americans are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work and the average duration of unemployment has nearly doubled from 19.8 weeks to 38.8 weeks under Obama. Think about that...we have millions of Americans in this country that have given up hope under a President that cunningly used the word "hope" in his campaign slogan to get elected the leader of the free world.

The failure of Obama to lead and the policies he himself said would help, have now boiled down to this gut wrenching statistic: the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased from 31.9 million to 46.7 million, a nearly 50 percent increase.

The central question of this campaign comes down to this: is this country better off than we were four years ago? If Team Obama and their billion dollar campaign can't even answer this question (without lying) then we will have to answer it for them at the ballot box Nov. 6th. As Clint Eastwood said last Thursday night, "we own this country." We own it, not Obama, and by nearly every measurement he's failed us. He got his shot, he didn't get the job done, it's now time to take back what we own.

Tags: Matt Pinnell

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