The Simplest Explanation is Usually Correct

Occam's Razor suggests that you don't need to come up with complicated narratives to explain the slow decline of Barack Obama's approval rating from the low-mid 60s to the high 50s. Over time, it will become more and more difficult to claim that George W. Bush's presidency is the reason things are still bad today. In addition, while we seem to be out of the catastrophic moment between September 2008 and March 2009, the number of people who say the economy is doing poorly is on the rise again. And no one else believes it's getting better. Because, let's face it, it's not. It's not immediately clear that if economy were doing worse, Obama would be doing better; economic determinism isn't always the way to go, but it's frequently a decent description of the state of the world.