President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.
The biggest reason for Obama's fall: a sharp drop in approval among Democrats and liberals, apparently unhappy with his moves toward the center since he led the party to landslide losses in November's midterm elections. At the same time, he's gained nothing among independents.
"He's having the worst of both worlds right now," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the national survey.
"As he moves to the center, he's not picking up support among independents and he's having some fall-off among his base. If his strategy is to gain independents and keep the Democrats in tow, it isn't working so far."
Voters want results. What they see is Obama cutting a deal that his base hates, and at the same time he's gotten absolutely nothing in return. Republicans have still blocked everything in the lame duck session. Even worse, Obama folding on taxes and getting nothing back for it makes him look weak.
Dems are pissed. Independents haven't seen anything that indicates this was a good deal. Republicans still hate the President.
So what has he gained? So far, a fat load of nothing. And he's given up quite a bit. Americans are overwhelmingly against tax cuts for the wealthy and want to see DADT repealed, and so far Obama's dropped the ball on those issues and a lot more.
The deal could have been a win if Obama has actually gotten something out of it. But a week in and the President once again has nothing to show for what he's already given up. He's likely not to get anything for it, either.
Clinton learned to fight back. Will Obama?
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2 comments:
I'll never come around to the notion that the pathetic folks who represent his party in Congress could have actually passed a better deal, but I have come around to the notion that his big mistake was not getting buy-in from Democrats. Still, once he had a deal, what made him and fellow Democrats look bad to most voters, I believe, was not getting the thing passed, not giving up too much. If the damn thing went through, he would have had centrist support, quite possibly enough to make up for liberal slippage. Is that a good enough reason to go along? Maybe, maybe not. But I still say what centrists dislike is that Democrats seem pathetic.
That's just it.
I have yet to hear anyone explain to me how Obama magically gets a better deal than the one being trashed now.
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