Eric Fehrnstrom, adviser to Mitt Romney, argued that the central question of the election is whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago in an interview on Fox News Monday -- and explained why he thinks the Obama campaign can't win on that question.

The Romney campaign began pushing this question as a talking point on Sunday when they stressed the sometimes awkward responses to the question from Obama surrogates on the Sunday talk shows and plan to use it throughout the Democratic convention this week and beyond.

"They made a political calculation that they have to say that things are better today than they were four years ago," Fehrnstrom said. But in doing so, they "risk alienating the majority of people in this country that know from their own experience that things are not better."

The Romney campaign is happy to point out all the ways they think Americans are not better off. "Saying that things are better off is an insult for the 23 million Americans out of work or unemployed," Fehrnstrom said. "The unemployment rate is higher from 7.8 percent when Obama took office to 8.3 percent today. Gas prices have doubled. Incomes have declined on average by about $4,000 per household."