[Plutarch]

I attended a talk by Victor Davis Hanson last night.

He emphasized that the wheels will fall off the Obama agenda wagon when approval gets to about 40%.

That's how it worked for Bush, but it took until 2005.

[nathanbedford]

I think that Obama has already reached the 40% level when the Harris poll is adjusted two notches, one for registered voters and one more for likely voters. Add to that the subjective factors that this is a Harris poll and Harris is a confirmed Democrat pollster, and the momentum is clearly accelerating against Obama. Another subjective adjustment to be made is the fact that Obama is holding according to the last figures I read 75% of the black vote which means that 8% of his adjusted 40% belong to a category that probably is at its irreducible level. That means that about 32% of non-African-American likely voters support Barack Obama.

While these numbers will not be reported in this fashion they are certainly matters of open knowledge among professional politicians. If you are a Democrat politician with few or no African-Americans in your district you are facing an election in which you must run away from the titular head of your party who has support of only one in three voters. If you're a Democrat politician in a black district, you have more options but your district was never really in play anyway.

These more subtle realities explain why reports are leaking out from many left-wing sources that the Democrat party is disintegrating into panic mode.

It is a fascinating speculation to put oneself in the shoes of some of these Democrats who might be ideologues but who are careerists first. Under these circumstances they would normally triangulate and vear away from the party line. But this season the atmosphere in the Democrat party is different than it's ever been in my lifetime. I suppose there is real fear among run-of-the-mill Democrats about the power extrinsic agents like George Soros and his 527s, fortified by immense amounts of money, have to destroy maverick Democrats who go off the reservation in order to save themselves. These careerists are put in a real dilemma. If they follow Obama, Pelosi, and Reid they know they will go over the cliff. If they buck the likes of Soros and his sinister apparatus, he is likely to knife them from behind and he has the power and the money to do it. Oh, the humanity!