[Newsbot]

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: America's most unwanted (click to view)
Date: September 7, 2011
While I still stand firm in my belief that President Obama will be able to eke out a second term next November, there’s nothing to say his victory will be particularly grand or inspiring. Certainly when contrasted to his decisive win in 2008, Obama’s return to office in 2012 seems likely to unfold as a far gloomier, narrower sort of “default victory,” spawned not by any particular sense of optimism or enthusiasm for the man and his vision, but simply a lack of viable opponents and the rigid, fearful partisanship of the Democratic voting base.

Accoring to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday, the President’s disapproval rating has now climbed to 51%, a number that increases even further when we get into more specific realms, such as his handling of the economy (59% hate it) and the general on-the-wrong-track-ness of the nation in general (73% say it’s going to hell). A striking 30% flat-out declare they have a “very negative” view of Obama, a figure that has risen more than 500% since his 2009 inauguration.

Until recently, it was conventional wisdom that no president with a disapproval rating of over 50% could ever win re-election, but George W. Bush bucked that trend in 2004. Through the cynical politicking of Karl Rove, the Bush presidency ended up proving quite definitively that in a nation where only half of the country’s population even bothers to vote, elections can be won in open spite of the majority preference — so long as the winning candidate can cobble together an uber-loyal base of minorities. For Bush, that winning coalition consisted of Americans who were, by and large, far more religious, rural, southern, and elderly than the national average, while Obama, as I’ve noted before, has a base that’s disproportionately young, urban, wealthy, and nonwhite.

Both men were also aided by weak partisan opponents; expert practitioners of the “anything you can do, I can do better” school of unpopularity. In Obama’s case, the President’s slipping numbers don’t seem to be occurring in any sort tandem with rising right-wing fortunes. Despite breathless media coverage of the GOP primary and Tea Party antics, both groups are actually polling almost identically to President Obama at the moment. Which is to say, badly. The same NBC/Post poll mentioned above has the Republican Party’s favorable/unfavorable rating at 32/46%, and the Tea Party at 28/43%.

The latter numbers are particularly galling for violating what is supposedly the established narrative of the last year, namely that disillusionment with both mainstream parties is spawning the rise of some dynamic new movement capable of proving a more legitimate political voice to the previously voiceless. Yet as studies like this recent one in the New York Times begin to pile up, and the Tea Party is revealed to be little more than an always-there faction of hardcore Republicans, those same activists who so self-righteously considered themselves beyond the taint of partisanship aren’t winding up particularly immune to the country’s disgust for politics-as-usual.

The degree to which conservatives have failed to fill Obama’s inspirational vacuum is on particularly stark display when one considers that Congress, where Republicans and the Tea Party have been flexing a lot of muscle lately, has an approval rating of only 13%. It’s a number so pitifully small that the Daily Show was able to run quite a funny segment the other day highlighting just how hard it’s become to find a single, random American willing to praise the work of his elected officials.

Last week, I was interviewed for a story in the Toronto-based Globe and Mail where I, as a stalwartly pro-American Canadian, was asked to comment on some recent numbers indicating Canadians were more likely than ever to consider the United States broken, ungovernable, and teetering on the precipice of finical ruin. My distaste for chauvinistic schadenfreude aside, I told the reporter it’s hard to blame Canadians for being particularly anti-American at a time when Americans have never been more anti-American themselves.

In the mid-1970s, in the aftermath of Watergate, stagflation, widespread unemployment, and international chaos, President Carter warned Americans not to wallow in malaise — and was promptly turfed from office in favor of the sunny Ronald Reagan. Presiding over an unprecedented era of joblessness, war, and debt, Obama may very well be the Carter of our time, but the emergence of a new Reagan still seems supremely unlikely. For all his eventual faults, Reagan at least had a novel set of ideas and a jolly disposition, while his modern-day heirs possess neither.

The apathy and disillusion that has driven the President into such a dark hole, may, ironically, be the very same forces that wind up awarding him a second term. If things aren’t going to get much better either way, then why not stick with the loser you know?

[Psudo]

The only consistent demonstration of polls is that we live in an era of cynicism.

[xerxes]

Wasn't the same that poll that had his job approval rating so low the same poll that nevertheless has his personal likeability still in the 70's?

[DanSC]

xerxes wrote:

Wasn't the same that poll that had his job approval rating so low the same poll that nevertheless has his personal likeability still in the 70's?

It's kind of like my co-worker Steve. Great guy to be around, but he's horrid at his job.

[Gunnair]

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

[DanSC]

Gunnair wrote:

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

Let's hope not.

[Gunnair]

DanSC wrote:

Gunnair wrote:

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

Let's hope not.

Can't say I see any real way of effecting change in such a polarized political climate and a seemingly absolute inability to stop the economic free fall.

States start pulling out because the ship is going down might be the impetus to take a long hard look on how business is done.

[DanSC]

Considering a little less than one out of every 50 Americans died in our last Civil War, I'm still hoping.

[Psudo]

Tolerance of succession is now as it was then, the beginning of the end.

I really don't see any existential threats to the United States except overreaction.

[fifeboy]

[Teikiatsu]

Gunnair wrote:

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

As a gun toting, tea partying, annoying originalist/constitutionalist... that's crazy talk. Americans don't whip out guns to solve our problems, no matter what the idiots in mainstream media wants people to believe. We solve our political problems at the ballot box.

Newsbot wrote:

simply a lack of viable opponents

What do you mean? A two-year expired can of cream of mushroom soup is a viable choice to run the executive branch when compared to Barack Obama. Although I'm not fond of Huntsman, Paul or Romney I *will* vote for them in the general election because they will do a better job. This isn't 2008 where the general conservative population (40%+ of America) saw McCain and either didn't vote or did so grudgingly. The landslide off-year elections of 2010 were just the tip of the iceberg in terms of conservative and/or GOP turnout.

Quote:

Which is to say, badly. The same NBC/Post poll mentioned above has the Republican Party’s favorable/unfavorable rating at 32/46%, and the Tea Party at 28/43%.

NBC/WSJ poll... not impressed.

Quote:

I told the reporter it’s hard to blame Canadians for being particularly anti-American at a time when Americans have never been more anti-American themselves.

Not anti-American, anti-federal government. Fed Govt != America.

[GreenTiger]

Gunnair wrote:

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

Personally I would far prefer to be annexed by Canada.

[Bruce_the_vii]

That was certainly a good article, waded into a difficult prognosis. I don't see the Republicans scooping up Obama's unpopularity. The American people know that the economy is stalled and it's simply not going to be as easy as a bad economy. I'm wondering if Obama's promise to spend more for jobs will sell. Priming the pump maybe still the thing to do, although I'm not an economist. The stakes are pretty high.

[Gunnair]

GreenTiger wrote:

Gunnair wrote:

The central government of the US has become so vastly bloated and self serving that I sometimes wonder if secession is the only way to effect real change.

Personally I would far prefer to be annexed by Canada.

No thanks. We have enough of our own problems and you guys tend to be ungovernable when you get cranky.

You, however, can cross over anytime.

[Dragon-Dancer]

Teikiatsu wrote:

Quote:

I told the reporter it’s hard to blame Canadians for being particularly anti-American at a time when Americans have never been more anti-American themselves.

Not anti-American, anti-federal government. Fed Govt != America.

That seems like a strange thing to say, without a federal (central) government to speak for the country America wouldn't exactly be a country so Fed Govt MUST be America. States power is one thing but without a fed you don't have a single voice.