... when answering questions on the fly, especially when speaking to COMMONFOLK.

My explanation: I think Obama does best speaking to commonfolk (or even simple-minded people) when he FIRST gives his answer in one sentence or less. Then he can go on to give disclaimers, history, background, reasoning, and definitions or whatever. Currently, on the fly, Obama often speaks like an academic, explaining his reasoning first, verbally processing his ideas, meandering around and playing process-of-elimination, before finally getting out the punchline. By then, simple-minded commonfolk are already lost. It sounds like old politics and doublespeak to them. They want the answer up front as much as possible and then they'll listen to his reasoning. Obama does this sometimes, but needs to do it more often. I think this is partially why he lost many blue collar voters to Hillary. She answered questions by first saying what she would do and then explaining how or why she would do it.