Obama Approval Polls in Free Fall
By Steve_in_KC on August 23, 2009 at 1:01 PM in Current Affairs
The honeymoon is officially over.
President Obama now faces disapproval from a majority of Americans, when it comes to his job performance.
According to Zogby’s most recent interactive survey results, President Barack Obama’s job approval rating has dropped to a record low of 45% among likely voters nationwide. About 51% of the respondents disapprove of his job as president.
Those are staggering numbers, considering his approval rating was about 60% at his 100-day mark. In fact, it’s pretty much a nose-dive. But he still has a few supporters left:
Groups that are more likely to approve of his job as president are Democrats (84%), females (54%), African Americans (84%), liberals (94%), 18-to-29 year olds (57%), respondents who do NOT consider themselves members of the investor class (54%), and those who never shop at Wal-Mart (67%).
Oh, wow! Even the Wal-Mart haters are losing their hope for change! Yes, we can? Guess we can’t!
If No Quarter took a poll of Obama’s performance as President, we pretty much know those who approve would be in the troll class of life forms.
In another question, where respondents were asked “how would you rate Barack Obama’s job as president — excellent, good, fair or poor?”, 16% of the sample chose “Excellent”, 27% “Good”,11% “Fair” and 45% “Poor”.
Most NQ readers come here because they know we don’t think very highly of him. In fact, we think pretty lowly of him. How low? As Jed Clampett once said, “Lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.”
Judging by reader comments, I would estimate his approval rating is around 1% and his disapproval rating is about 1000%, plus or minus the standard 2%.
Pollster John Zogby summed it up:
“None of these numbers looks counter-intuitive to me. Gallup, NBC, and Pew all have Obama at record lows. Rasmussen also shows low approval. Things are volatile out there and news travels fast. There is a lot of anxiety over healthcare,” said Zogby International President and CEO John Zogby. “The President let it get away from him and voters are scared right now. They are experiencing sacrifice overload and feel more threatened than empowered. The President is being forced to play defense and he is much better when he is in possession of the ball. But do not underestimate Obama. Last August he was toast.”
He was? He had just been coronated as The One! He gave his acceptance speech in the Colosseum! He turned the city of Chicago into one huge celebration of Him! That’s toast?
Giving credit where it’s due, I discovered this Zogby poll article from an email sent to me by conservative e-mag Newsmax.com. I signed up for it last summer, back when Obama was toast, in support of John McCain. I haven’t canceled it, even though it’s stuffed with right wing hooey I can’t stomach, like glorifying the likes of Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy. They also frequently feature former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, who had a major falling out with the former President and particularly with Hillary Clinton, whom he often savaged during her bid for the Democratic nomination, and to this day. Nonetheless, I’m going to share this segment from Newsmax, featuring a quote from the toe-sucking, whore-mongering turncoat:
The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president’s popularity.
Those numbers also indicate that Obama clearly is in serious political trouble, Fox News analyst and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
“As soon as Obama dropped below 52 percent . . . he was leaking real voters who had backed him in November,” Morris tells Newsmax. “Now that he is down to 45 percent among likely voters . . . he is in deep political trouble.”
Of greatest concern to Obama may well be his decline among all-important independent voters. Just 37.5 percent of self-identified independents say they approve of how Obama is handling the presidency. That compares with 59.2 percent of independents who disapprove.
The only thing Obama has done right, as most of us see it, was appointing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. As Michael Corleone famously said in The Godfather, Part II, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”
We’re definitely not mainstream, but don’t be surprised to see the number of NQ readers escalate. The country is waking up quickly from Obama-mania.
A little side trip:
I was about 12 years old when Beatle-mania took America by storm. If you were of a cognitive age in 1963-66, you surely remember the utter madness of it all. The country was still reeling in shock, in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy in late November of 1963, when radio stations began to receive demo copies of a few songs that sounded like nothing else on American radio. A few daring DJs tested a few songs on the air, and by early 1964 we started hearing songs like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” and “I Saw Her Standing There.”
The Beatles rode the tops of the charts, with famous appearances on the top variety show on TV, The Ed Sullivan Show, sold out stadium concerts, and millions of teenage girls pulling their hair and fainting in ecstatic rapture.
As the popularity of the Beatles soared, conservative America was in a different kind of shock as they watched their church-going virgin children turn into hip-shaking zombies. The boys were refusing haircuts and picking up guitars, the girls were drooling over young men with women’s hair, and they were all speaking some new language their parents didn’t understand.
Then came the backlash: in 1966, some teen magazine was interviewing John Lennon and the subject drifted to religion. He made a comment, jokingly, about the popularity of religion fading, and that at the moment it seemed to him that The Beatles were more popular than Christianity.
This became a catalyst for conservative parents to start stamping out Beatle-mania. Churches began having Beatles Burning Parties, where teenagers brought all their Beatle records and paraphernalia and burned them in bonfires. This grabbed a lot of headlines and kind of broke the spell, with millions of kids becoming anti-Beatles. It had a chilling effect on the whole Beatles phenomenon and pretty much became the end of the Beatle-mania period.
The American love affair with The Beatles lasted only about two years. After that, they remained music royalty, but they were no longer solid gold.
Back to Obama:
Similarly, in 2006, this country was beginning to shake off the nightmare of the Bush II administration and looking forward to new leadership. The media led the charge, embracing the marketing savvy of David Axelrod, who had recently had big successes helping Eliot Spitzer get the governorship of New York, and Deval Patrick get elected as the first black governor of Massachusetts. And we see how well that has worked out!
Axelrod had a new product he had been developing and test-marketing in Chicago for several years- a young one-term state senator from Chicago. Axelrod thought this young man was ready for prime-time, even though he had no credentials.
In an ironic twist, his name (Obama) resembled and rhymed with the name of George Bush’s Public Enemy Number One (Osama). A vote for Obama was like a double slap in the face to Bush! If you’ve ever been involved in commercial marketing, as I have, you know the truth in this gimmick.
Being a political marketing guru, Axelrod knew he had to have some catch phrases that would make great sound bites – the political version of hit records. Instead of “All You Need Is Love,” his team of writers came up with “Change We Need.” Instead of “Yes It Is,” they had “Yes We Can.” Instead of “Help!” they had “Hope!”
The Beatles were on top of the world for about two years before the record burnings. Obama soared to stardom in January of 2008 with the first primaries. That was about a year and a half ago.
Tick tock tick tock.
After the Beatles fell from grace with Lennon’s words being twisted into blasphemy, they began to have fewer hit records. They stopped doing concerts. They went to India and came back changed men. They began using drugs and writing weird stuff that wasn’t even rock’n'roll anymore. Most importantly, they began recording as individuals and with other musicians. They were still a band, but no longer monogamous to each other. They finally split up in 1969, only five years after hitting the big time. They still had plenty of loyalists in the final years, but their super-stardom had lost its glitter.
The change in The Beatles in 1966 was major, but what really changed the band forever and destined them to break-up was the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, in August of 1967. The glue that had held them together died unexpectedly and they literally came unglued. This was a mere three years after they conquered America as the lead force of The British Invasion of 1964.
The proof, to most fans, that their glory days were over, was the release of a short made-for-TV film and accompanying album called “Magical Mystery Tour” as their first project after Epstein’s death. It’s weirdness and lack of quality made it the first real Beatles flop. It was all downhill from there.
Obama has already peaked. With his popularity sliding, and painted into so many corners he is clinging to the chandelier, he’s already going down. His apparent failure to put together and enact comprehensive health care reform could be his Magical Mystery Tour moment.
While the whole country is in economic meltdown with unemployment still climbing, and while his Cash For Clunkers program has been exposed as an administrative failure, he backpedals on the Public Option for a government-run health program and rules out government bargaining with Big Pharmaceuticals.
At the same time the White House announces the national deficit will be $2 TRILLION more than previously projected, he releases a statement honoring the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (a month of fasting and Islamic prayer) and packs his family up for a 10-day vacation with the rich folks in Martha’s Vineyard. Am I the only one whose eyebrows were raised at seeing these headlines side by side?
At the rate his ratings have gone this year, and with his legions of fans feeling betrayed by his infamous backtracking, his principle campaign promises failing or abandoned, and his coolness soured like last year’s over-played hit songs, he may as well resign himself to one term.
Or better yet, just resign.
Tick tock tick tock.
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