Bad poll numbers for President Obama. PEW Research Center just came out with numbers saying that his approval number is down to 44%. In May, it was up to 56%, losing 12 points. By most polls he has lost 4 to 7 percentage points. PEW has the most, Washington Post has the smallest margins, but obviously those numbers are not good.
There are a lot of numbers that are not good. I will give you one of them. 90% of Americans according to the ABC Washington Post Poll think the state of the economy is either not so good or poor. It is very hard to win re-election when 90% of the country believe that the state of the economy is in really bad shape.
So those numbers do not bode well, but what is more important and interesting for the President, in terms of can he get people to come out and vote and actually win the election, can he organize and energize his base, is the numbers when it comes to progressive voters. And there we have some serious trouble. These overall numbers can go up and down. They went up when he caught Bin Laden; now they are going down because of the economy, etc. But when you look at the base, it’s eroding. Let’s take a look.
CNN says that there is growing dissatisfaction on the left and that is helping to erode his numbers. “Roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he’s not been liberal enough.” Now that’s going to blow away Washington conventional wisdom: Fox News called him a socialist so how can he not be liberal enough?
But, no, the reason his numbers are going down because people are saying, “hey, wait a minute, this guy’s not liberal. Why is he agreeing with every single thing that the Republicans propose?” That’s why his numbers are going down. By the way, this is the last time you will hear this. Even though it’s CNN’s own poll, they will never talk about it again. Every time they talk about President Obama and his low approval numbers, they will frame it in the context of not agreeing with the Republicans enough. Watch, you’ll see.
Washington Post ABC News Poll: the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs has plunged 22 points from 53% last year to 31%, meaning even liberals are saying, Obama is not creating jobs. And at this point as he is trying to cut spending, he is not even trying to create jobs. These liberal Democrats are right.
Point number three: The President’s actions have helped the economy. That number has dropped from 77% in October among African Americans to just over half of those surveyed. So even among African Americans it’s just barely over half of them that say he has helped the economy. That is a very bad number. The base is eroding like crazy.
Point number four: the President’s approval rating among self-identified “liberals” has dropped to 70%. You might say that 70% is a big number, but that’s 30% of self-identified liberals saying I don’t like the Democratic President; I do not approve of him. Understand it is such a partisan game. Are you on team Democrat or team Republican: that’s how it has been classically. For liberals to say I do not like the captain of my own team, I do not approve of him, that is a very bad number.
Point number five, and this is the poll that they did at the NetRoots Convention: 80% of the people there said President Obama was doing a good job. Remember, at the convention, they were all riled up and asked, are you in favor of your President or against him, 80% said yes: although it appears to be a big number, these people are all supposed to be on his side. But when you look beyond that number, when you look at how many liberals strongly approve of a Democratic President, Barack Obama, that number is only 27%.
Do you know what that means? That means that they are not excited. That means the hardcore guys, the guys at NetRoots, the bloggers, the people watching my show, etc., they are all going to vote anyway because they care about politics. But the people who are not excited, who don’t care a lot about politics, those are the ones that we are worried about that are not going to go to show up to vote because people are not excited, there is no strong approval.
Okay, the last poll number, point number six: nearly half of Obama’s own base–45% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents–want someone to challenge him for the Democratic nomination. Everybody in Washington says, primary, that’s crazy; of course, you can’t primary Obama, that would hurt the Democrats. That’s crazy talk, totally unacceptable. But 45% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say by all means, please do so: please challenge the President because they do not strongly approve of him and a lot of them flat out don’t approve of him at all, and a lot of that is because they don’t think he is nearly liberal enough. And by the way, they are absolutely right.
So now in the midst of all of that, President Obama is talking about a grand bargain where he would cut social security, where he would cut medicare, and where he would cut the top tax rates, and he would throw in a tremendous amout of spending cuts on top of that gift packaged up for the Republicans.
And, gee, I wonder why he is losing his base.
Do you still hold the same position you did in “Tax Deductions of Barter Exchanges” regarding the deductibility of business expenses involved in a barter transaction?
Yes.
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