Opinion: Nearly half of Obama’s supporters have now given up on him: poll
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Nearly half the people who once considered themselves supporters of President Barack Obama don’t anymore.
Other than that, his virtually nonstop cross-country campaigning for embattled Democrats in the Nov. 2 election is working perfectly. Monday night, he spoke to two party fundraisers of ordinary American millionaires in Miami, as The Ticket reported here.
A new poll released today by Bloomberg News finds all that hopey-changey stuff is rapidly turning to disappointment and disenchantment. While 47% of all voters approve of Obama’s job now, ominously for 2012 only 36% of onetime Obama supporters now approve. Feeling jilted?
Someone named Hillary Clinton is now viewed favorably by fully 64% of Americans, even more than like Obama’s wife.
Of course, Obama is on no ballot three weeks from today. But Republicans appear to ...
... be succeeding in making the Democrat’s first midterm election -- a time of traditional defeat anyway for the party of the White House occupant -- into a referendum on the Illinois guy. Something about a stubborn national unemployment rate of 9.6% despite $700+ billion in non-stimulating stimulus spending and promises to keep the jobless rate below 8%.
Something about consecutive federal deficits of $1,291,000,000,000 and $1,416,000,000,000 despite that campaign promise to go through the budget line by line. Something about a controversial healthcare bill that a near-majority of Americans would like repealed.
On foreign policy, now that all the troops are on station from Obama’s second Afghanistan troop surge, six in 10 Americans believe the 9-year-old war is a lost cause. Etc.
Meanwhile, a separate Gallup Poll Monday showed the Republican lead on the indicative generic congressional ballot remained strong.
A slim majority (53%) like the guy who just redecorated the Oval Office; he’s got an OK jump shot and who knows what his golf handicap is after 52 rounds as chief executive?
They just don’t like the job Obama is doing as president -- 47% think his policies have actually hurt the economy.
And 53% think that about the president’s Democratic Party, which, not coincidentally, has held complete control of both houses of Congress since the 2006 midterm elections.
Two-thirds of these likely voters do think George W. Bush hurt the economy, too. But it seems he hasn’t been president now for 21 months and things are still in the tank, with no end in sight.
Unemployment is the country’s top concern, as it has been for the entire Obama administration, even when he was holding more than five dozen healthcare townhalls. The deficit is the No. 2 concern.
In fact, almost two out of three Americans believe the country is on the wrong track under President Obama.
Which is not typically how congressional leaders like Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would like the country to feel after 46 months of their Capitol Hill reign of error.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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