Obama in 2011: Voters not better economically than four years ago

President Obama’s top surrogates on Monday pushed the message that Americans are better off today than they were four years ago.

"Absolutely," answered Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on NBC's "Today" show. 

Yet, in a 2011 interview, Obama himself said voters were not better off economically. “Well, I don't think they're better off than they were four years ago,” the president told ABC News last October.

“They're not better off than they were before Lehman's collapse, before the financial crisis, before this extraordinary recession that we're going through,” he continued. “I think that what we've seen is that we've been able to make steady progress to stabilize the economy, but the unemployment rate is still way too high. And that's why it's so critical for us to make sure that we are taking every action we can take to put people back to work.”

The debate over whether the nation is better off now than it was four years ago is critical to whether Obama will win another four-year term. Republicans say the answer is clearly a no, and their chief argument is that the nation's unemployment rate remains above 8 percent while the nation's debt has climbed to nearly $16 trillion. 

Democrats argue Obama inherited a country in free-fall from President George W. Bush, and that he has begun to turn it around over the past four years. Among the points they highlight are Obama's rescue of the auto industry, his financial reform legislation and the fact that the economy has added jobs every month for nearly two and a half years.  ...