Posted on 05/09/2012 2:50:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The mainstream media seems to have awoken to the fact that an incumbent President polling in the mid-40s in May could very well be an unemployed former President by January. Josh Kraushaar analyzes the latest polling and pronounces Barack Obama the underdog in the race:
This presidential election is coming down to two immutable facts that have become increasingly clear as November draws closer: President Obama will be running for a second term under a stagnant economy, and his two most significant legislative accomplishments—health care reform and a job-goosing stimulus—remain deeply unpopular. It doesn’t take a professional pundit to recognize that’s a very tough ticket for reelection.
Let’s not forget that the ad that supposedly presents Obama’s record — “Go” — doesn’t mention either of those legislative accomplishments, nor the costly Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill passed nearly two years ago. ObamaCare polls so badly that even a plurality of Democrats want the Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate on which it’s based.
The Obama-Romney matchups aren’t the only worrisome data from the polls, either. Despite the best attempts from Democrats to paint Republicans as a disloyal opposition, voters simply aren’t buying it:
Obama’s scores on the economy are worsening, even as voters still have mixed feelings on who’s to blame. In the Battleground survey, nearly as many voters now blame Obama for the state of the economy (39 percent) as those who don’t think it’s his fault (40 percent). In both the Battleground and Democracy Corps polls, 33 percent said the country is on the right track, with 59 percent saying it’s on the wrong track—numbers awfully similar to the state of play right before the 2010 Republican landslide. These are several leading indicators that suggest the trajectory could well get worse for the president as the election nears.
And the survey data suggest that Republicans in Congress, unlike their Newt Gingrich-led counterparts in 1996, aren’t shaping up to be the reviled opposition (yet) that the White House is hoping they’ll be. The Battleground survey found Republicans leading Democrats by 2 points on the generic congressional ballot, while Democracy Corps found Democrats in Congress with only a slightly higher approval score (43.1) than Republicans (41.2). If the public favors Hill Democrats, it’s by a narrow margin.
Finally, Kraushaar argues that the main columns in Obama’s base are significantly less energized than in 2008:
The other big red flag for the president is the waning enthusiasm of his base—college-age voters, African-Americans, and Hispanics. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that fewer than half of voters (45 percent) ages 18-34 expressed a high interest in the election, down 17 points from the same time four years ago. Democratic enthusiasm overall is down 16 points from 2008, and it now lags behind the GOP.
This is critical, because, for Obama, excitement is as important as persuasion. It’s no coincidence that Obama held his first two rallies on college campuses. Obama campaign officials have been anticipating an upward tick in the minority share of the electorate for 2012 to compensate for the expected loss of older, white voters, and they are counting on college students to organize and rally behind the president, like they did for him in 2008. Those assumptions are hardly guaranteed.
We’ve already seen the campaign get embarrassed by bad turnouts for their campaign launch events this week, both at college campuses where Obama attained rock-star status in 2008. They’re obviously concerned about it, too, because the campaign has launched a $25 million ad buy in nine swing states, according to National Journal — an odd decision six months out from the election, which looks like desperation. Kraushaar likens it to abandoning the running game when trailing by two touchdowns in a football game, but even more so because this is really the first quarter of the general election campaign.
Not only does it appear that Obama could lose, the campaign seems to exhibiting some signs of panic over the prospect, too. That may be deliberate, though, as they try to convince donors to open up their checkbooks. Yesterday, James Carville tried to hit the alarm on CNN, both in an appearance with John King and in a column with a very clear message of WTFU, both of which AP addressed in his QOTD last night. Carville’s looking at the same polling data as Kraushaar, and the same reality check has resulted. And in case you’re wondering, WTFU is not a reference to winning the future:
Carville calls for an “insurgent mentality,” but that’s going to be a tall order for the establishment. Obama has been in office for more than three years. Is he going to run against himself? He can’t run against a do-nothing Congress, because the chamber that’s doing nothing is the Senate — which is controlled by Democrats.
Whatever the sense of real or feigned panic, the point to all of this is to get big-ticket liberal donors worried enough to start raising money and engaging in the election. It may be that these donors already know of Obama’s plight, however, and don’t feel like intervening to save him from his electoral fate. After all, none of this is exactly news. The only news is the fact that the media seems to finally be noticing it.
It’s just occuring to the folks in the largely-gay media bubble what most of us have known since November, 2010. OBAMA IS TOAST...
Too many lies, too many failures, and he is now exposed to even the most ignorant of the sheeple.
He promised Unicorns and PIE!, and delivered a sh*t Sandwich, instead.
I’m predicting some seriously low turnout overall.
Middle America will vote for whoever the TV tells them - in this case Obama. They won’t know why Democrats are good, or Republicans/ conservatives/Tea Party are bad - but they will accept this premise as an article of faith.
Obama will spend the next four years consolidating power, which has been his primary objective from the beginning. And the US will fall to godless socialism.
We could still avert this, if we turn back to God as a nation with our whole hearts. But any other hope is fantasy.
Lefties are in the same quandary as Conservatives with mitt.
This will truly be an election between who is hated slightly less: a marxist fraud weakling or a backstabbing flip flopper. I don't want either.
Nope.
The graveyard vote is as energized as it was in 2008, and will deliver the victory.
That's why they are so antsy for Romney to clinch the nomination. Which he hasn't quite managed, yet.
/johnny
Well since a vast majority of the ‘middle class’ vote Republican, I think you may be incorrect.
It is the extreme rich and the extreme poor who vote for Democrats. Often for the same reason.
There’s a strong anti-incumbent tide going on during this global economic crisis. All the incumbents are losing... big.
James Carville has noted this in a recent opinion piece. He’s highly agitated about he lack of enthusiasm for Obama as well.
Unfortunately the GOP is going to give us “Obama-lite” with Romney. So my guess is that the leftward shift will slow, but it won’t be rolled back in any serious way.
In my job as a manager of a wholesale warehouse that caters to small businesses...about 200 reg customers I've know for years...
I have several kool aid drinking Obama bots as customers...I mean hateful, vitriol, Bush hating, Palin hating howl at the moon liberals...
Today...all but one are completely and totally out of the Obama camp...
I doubt they will even vote...
The other customers, especially the apolitical ones are always bitching and moaning about how bad Obama is
I know of no one who thinks Obama has done a good job
Romney is really going to have to screw up to lose this thing....but of course we are the "stupid party" going against the "evil party" so I'm sure we will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory ..
Thyey didn’t get turned on last time till the last month and a half of the last election before that they were squirming and flopping all over the place
Can he lose? I pray he will.
mark for later
Actually, we should keep repeating some disinformation so that the stupid party members get complacent..... “Obama is Invincible”!
That should be easy, considering that your party has terrorized this country for the past three years with endless debt and reckless spending.
This isn’t even a mystery or even a curiousity, except for those in charge of “reporting” the “news”.
“I’m predicting some seriously low turnout overall.”
This election will set a record for turnout; incumbents beware. People have been without work, money or hope for years at this point. If you think they were desperate when they voted for Obama, what are they now? Romney could probably win by vacationing in a cave until the election.
“Today...all but one are completely and totally out of the Obama camp...I doubt they will even vote...”
They can’t afford to sit this one out; they can never admit voting for Romney, but I’ll bet you most of them do. Anyone who loved Obama who has “fallen out of love” with him did so for a reason (lost a job, money, self-esteem, whatever); any “out of the camp” are motivated to set up a different camp.
Again, they’ll never admit it, but everyone is desperate now (and not in a way that favors Obama).
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