Team Obama, after a rocky start where they refused to answer that question or even answering honestly and answering "no," have changed those answers to declare America is better off today than they were four years ago.
This is important because recent polling from Washington Post/ABC News has shown that 72 percent of voters say Obama's handling of the economy will be a “major factor” in their vote this November.
Politicians from either side can say what they want, but American voter's are going to vote according to what they see and what they feel at home, their own wallets and financial situations.
According to Gallup in Swing States, 56 percent of registered voters do not think they or their families are better off than they were four years ago.
Rasmussen finds 60 percent of likely voters do not believe America is better off.
According to The Hill, published just this morning, 52 percent of likely voters say the country is in a "worse condition" now than it was four years ago.
Furthermore, 54 percent of likely voters feel that Barack Obama does not deserve a second term based solely on his job performance.
Real Clear Politics shows that averaging poll numbers from a variety of organizations, an average of 63 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
USA Today/Gallup recently found that on the issue of the economy, voters trust Mitt Romney more than Obama on the economy, in what they call a "significant advantage" and 2-to1, 63 percent to 29 percent, "those surveyed say Romney's background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation's economic problems over the next four years."
There is not a poll that has been conducted where a majority feels the country, they or their families are better off today than they were four years ago. Maybe if they sampled only liberals they could get one, but even Democratic leaning pollsters, like Democracy Corps, finds 62 percent of Americans saying the country is going in the wrong direction.
Obama has presided over the "feeblest economic recovery since the Great Depression" and that is a direct quote form the Associated Press article describing the weakest recovery since World War 2.
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? That is not a prolonged fight Obama wants to have because he cannot win it.
The Democratic Convention will be in the news for the rest of this week, so they can distract from that question for a little while, but Republican's are not going to back off the question nor this line of attack because every indicator shows that the economy is going to influence the majority of voters, especially those that are not part of a hardcore base for either political party.
(Spelling and grammatical corrections made to this post)