US President Barack Obama on Wednesday sought to draw a line under the question of whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago, asserting the answer is “absolutely.”
Obama’s campaign has stumbled when faced with the classic US election question, trying to balance the need to convey progress with the knowledge that many are still suffering from the after-effects of the Great Recession.
“We are absolutely better off than we were when I was sworn in and we were losing 800,000 jobs in a month,” he told media in the battleground state of Virginia as he prepared for his big convention speech in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Republicans have asked the question relentlessly since the weekend when it elicited a dizzying array of responses from Obama’s allies, first “no” then “sort of” and finally “absolutely.”
With fewer than nine weeks to go until Americans go to the polls, the president is still struggling to break the deadlock with Republican rival Mitt Romney.
Obama also said in Richmond, Virginia that he somewhat regretted telling business leaders “you didn’t build that.”