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Human Events...
Voters Are Listening
Obama near record low approval rating, and so is everyone else.
by John Hayward
04/19/2011
The Washington Post teamed with ABC News to poll President Obama’s
approval ratings, and came up with a dismal 47% approve and 50%
disapprove. Strong disapproval is up to 37%, which the Post
reports “nearly matches the worst level of his presidency.” The
President’s disapproval rating among independents has reached 55%,
which the Post describes as “near record highs.” A Gallup poll
released last Friday had Obama down to 41%.
Despite these awful numbers, the poll still finds Obama running ahead
of all the marqee GOP candidates, by double digits. It would seem
that “less than half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents
say they are satisfied with the field of GOP candidates.”
The Post hopefully notes that Ronald Reagan was below 50 percent
approval at the same point in his presidency, and went on to win
re-election in a landslide. It’s hard to survey the ruins of
Obama’s America and detect any brilliant policies that will soon pay
off with economic growth and rising poll numbers. The poll
reports that almost 80% of respondents say “inflation in their area is
getting worse,” while 70% say “higher gasoline prices are causing
financial hardship at home.” Both inflation and high gas prices
are deliberate features of Obama policy, not problems he stands on the
verge of erasing.
The poll discovered that “For the first time in available data, more
than half of whites without college degrees see the economy as
deteriorating.” High-information readers are likely to respond to
that finding with a hearty cry of “Gee, ya think?” but keep in mind the
general public is fed incessant stories about a marvelous Obama
“recovery” that is forever poking at the inside of its shell and
preparing to hatch. The bad economic and unemployment news is
always “unexpected.”
When a Democrat sits in the White House, the media become used-car
salesmen for economic recovery. When it’s a Republican, every
episode of the evening news begins with a montage of gas pump prices
ticking up like the score on a pinball machine, and men on the street
are asked how they think the recession is affecting their
neighbors. For a majority to reach the conclusion that the
economy is deteriorating indicates that a lot of average folks perceive
a truth that can no longer be hidden or spun away.
Of course, Congress always has awful approval ratings too. The
last NBC/Wall Street Journal poll gave them 20% approval and 73%
disapproval. It’s hard to assign any deeper meaning to
Congressional approval, since by definition, a sizable percentage of
Congress belongs to people any given voter is bound to disagree
with. That’s one of the reasons Presidents are always given
disproportionate credit or blame for everything the government does
during their term of office.
These polls portray a landscape of disaffection with the current
President. They’re waiting to hear bold and compelling talk about
the alternatives. It’s time for the Republican presidential
candidates to step up their game, and bring forth people who are ready
to stand before that audience and speak with both reason and
passion. Voters know we’re in deep trouble, and the same old
cocktail of platitudes and bromides isn’t going to fix the
problem. Note that Obama got absolutely no “bounce” whatsoever
from his big “budget speech” at George Washington University. It
looks like America retains a good number of voters who can tell the
difference between nasty political rhetoric and a plan.
If there’s one thing the President’s cratering approval numbers tell
us, it’s that people are tired of empty rhetoric, bitter class warfare,
and vapid happy talk. They’ll return to a diet of such things in
time, if they are not given something stronger and bolder to consider.
Update: An important additional point from reader Martin Hale is that
even by the dismal standards for skewed mainstream media poll samples,
this one’s a whopper. The Washington Post / ABC poll included a
mix of 32% who identified as Democrats, 22% Republican, 41%
independent, and 4% who gave no response. That’s an absurd 10%
skew toward Democrats, which means the pollsters know the real numbers
for Obama are even worse, and they do not want to report those numbers.
Read it at Human Events
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