Democrat Delegates Dubious About Obama on Economy

Democrats amassed for their party's national convention are expressing their belief that President Obama has not done enough to bring the economy back to health.

They tell Politico that they’re looking for more from Obama at the convention than an attack on Mitt Romney’s plans and business background. Obama needs to detail how he’ll boost hiring and incomes, the delegates say.

“The economy has been less than we expected, and spirits are down,” Marie Lopez Rogers, the mayor of Avondale, Ariz., who is in Charlotte, N.C., as a DNC delegate, told the website.

“We need him to lift our spirits back up and tell us what he is going to do differently.”

Maf Misbah Uddin, a union official and member of the New York delegation, agrees. “Romney says he will create 12 million new jobs. We need something like that,” he said. “We need to hear what [Obama] is going to do. We need something to be hopeful about.”

Just like Republicans, Uddin thinks Obama should have focused on jobs rather than health care during his first two years in the White House. The president should promise to work on jobs and only jobs if he wins a second term, Uddin says.

Kevin Elkins, the youngest member of the New York delegation at 22, said Republicans in Congress may well have stifled Obama’s policies. But if he’s re-elected, Obama will almost certainly have to deal with a Republican-controlled House and perhaps Senate as well. “Republicans have blocked him, but now he needs to lay out what he is going to do about it and where he is going to take the economy,” Elkins told Politico.