A new survey by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School for Public Health found dire news for Democrats: “When asked which party better understands the economic problems that people in the country are having, non-college whites side with the Republicans by a 14-point margin.”
That news is so uncomfortable for media liberals that the Post put that sentence in paragraph 15 of a story they placed on page A-2. The headline on this story by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz was “Non-college whites gloomy about economy: Group is more pessimistic than those with degrees, poll finds.” It wasn't “Non-college whites don't like Obama economic policies.” There's also that finding, in paragraph 13:
Just 14 percent of non-college whites say the president's economic policies are making things better, half the number of white college graduates saying so. Only 15 percent say they are getting ahead financially, again about half the number among white college graduates.
About six in 10 say the Obama administration is doing "too little" to look after the economic interests of their families, and not enough for the middle class and for small businesses. Nearly half say the administration is doing "too much" for wealthy Americans.
The Post also remembered how Obama trailed among these voters in 2008:
In the 2008 nomination battle, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) outpolled Obama among whites without college degrees by 2 to 1 across primaries that had exit polls. In the general election, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican nominee, captured 58 percent of the white, non-college vote compared with Obama's 40 percent (about matching George W. Bush's 2004 reelection victory margin over Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts).
Balz and Cohen did suggest in the story's second paragraph that this opinion was too harsh: “Whites without college degrees also are the most apt to blame Washington for the problems, and are exceedingly harsh in their judgment of the Obama administration and its economic policies.”
