Democrats facing re-election in 2014 will suffer because President Barack Obama ignores the economy, preferring instead to focus on other issues, political strategist Karl Rove said.
Rove provided a case in point by explaining the primary issues the White House currently displayed on its website.
"Go to the White House website today, and you'll see it's focused on pay equity, campus sexual assaults, and raising the minimum wage, " Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" on Wednesday.
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Rove said most Americans don't feel those issues would assist them in "making prosperity, giving them a good job, providing a good paycheck, or having their family be able to cope with the healthcare mess."
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Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released Wednesday showed Obama with a 44 percent overall job approval rating, and a 42 percent approval of his economic performance.
Rove offered two reasons for Obama's low poll numbers — the economy and healthcare. He explained the economy was "the biggest issue in the race," and called economic numbers "dreadful."
"People do not believe that the economy has improved. Their own personal circumstances are not dramatically improved. This is the first economic recovery in which the median household income has dropped," he said.
Rove said healthcare had become "a big negative" for Democrats and would "get worse so before the election." He explained Democrats had "squandered what has historically been a huge advantage for them on healthcare."
While Obama was aiming to energize the "left wing of the Democratic party" by focusing on issues to their liking, Rove said, "The intensity is now all with the president's critics" heading into the 2014 elections.
"What the president's trying to do is even that up a little bit in order to, on the margin, save some Democrats who would otherwise go down," Rove said.
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