Warning from the President!

[HappySqurriel]

fmc83 said:

SamuelRSmith said:

HappySqurriel said:

I could be wrong but I suspect that a lot of the panic to push forward Obama's agenda is because of how poor his approval rating has become. I don’t think there has been a president in recent history who’s approval rating has fallen as far, as fast, or to such a low level as Obama’s has in their first term. One important thing to understand about American politics is that if a president is popular enough few people will oppose him, and if he is unpopular enough few people will support him, and at the rate things are going by the end of the year every senator and member of congress will be doing everything in their power to distance themselves from Obama.

Right now most Republicans see bipartisanship as being a losing strategy for their political careers, and more and more conservative Democrats are seeing Obama as being more of a liability than anything else. Within the next couple of weeks Obama's support could fall to a level that he won't have the votes to continue his agenda.

Now, the ironic thing is that his approval rate is falling so quickly because people voted against George W. Bush's agenda (and not for Obama's agenda) and the speed and scale of the changes that Obama is making do not sit well with them.

Have you got any graphical representations of his fall? Like month-on-month, I was actually wondering about this earlier.

So Obama's approval-rate has fallen from 69% to 56% in 6 months. If you feel like comparing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Presidential_approval_rating has a nice overview.

 

Just with a quick look, I must correct HappySqurriel, Gerald Fords rate fell even faster (it even looks like, that this is a common thing for democrats).

Well, I admit I could be wrong on the historical changes and I have (mostly) been following the rasmussen daily presidential tracking poll which has his approval rate down to 51% of likely voters; and an interesting trend they track there is the percentage of likely voters who strongly approve compared to the percentage of voters who strongly disaprove.

Now, I do agree with people who claim that an elected official should not be acting based on their polls because often unpopular things have to be done; and sometimes things are popular/unpopular based on unrealistic expectations. The thing people often miss when watching polls move when elected officials try to approach difficult issues is that the same approach towards the same issue may impact two politicians completely differently primarily because of political credibility.

A politician with a long track record of doing the right thing with results that typically meet or surpass people's realistic expectations often get given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to voters when they approach a new challenge. The problem Obama currently faces is he really doesn't have much of a track record, and the actions he has taken since becomming president have often tracked at or below people's worst case expectations and proven his critics correct.