The Economy's Better: Why Don't Voters Believe It?

At 9:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, Cyndi Diercks stood poolside at the Paddling Pooch in Bettendorf, Iowa, watching Ollie, her 12-year-old Weimaraner, swim laps. Between tosses of a fluorescent-green floating chew toy, Diercks, the 54-year-old owner of a local landscaping business and a leader of a local tea party group, enumerated all that was wrong with the U.S. economy.