Obama's approval rating sinks to new low

Attributed to high gas prices. Amazing.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57395703-503544/poll-obamas-approval-rating-sinks-to-new-low/

 

Boom, you get off Whitman's sign-on this instant!

 

I honestly was shocked when I saw the headline. I guess I thought he was fairly popular at this point. I guess there's nothing that gets people overheated faster than gas prices.

 

Good. I hope now America elects Newt Gingrich next week so he'll get us that $2.50 gas he's promised.

 

People want what they want. In March, 2014, President Romney will be lucky if he's at 41 percent. If gas prices are that influential, no President has a chance. They're not coming down except in global depressions. Maybe if we occupy Saudi Arabia -- you know, the way oil was going to be cheap after we invaded Iraq.

 

We need to occupy Canada.

 

Another factor that is downplayed, and one that I think you could probably check and would hold true over a lot of presidencies, is that right now he's unopposed while the GOP has four guys out talking about how bad Obama is. Obama's not on the campaign trail, and even when he speaks, his speeches play second fiddle to the primary. So there's a lot of "Obama's bad because of this" and "Obama's bad because of that" but not a lot of Obama saying "Hold on, now, that's crap" yet.

Approval ratings mean little to nothing when it comes to election outcomes. It should bother him some that independent voters are turning away, and he could really stand to get his message out more. In fact, if I were his advisers, I'd schedule a series of high-profile speeches over the next couple of months that highlight his successes. Maybe mix in a couple of potshots at the "opposition," including several mentions of lines like, "We were in dire straits when I took office thanks to lax policies that caused an economic breakdown. We've clawed our way back in many ways, but we still have lots of work to do." Set things up for the general election as a battle of ideologies between policies that got us into the Great Recession and the policies that are helping us get out of it, and refute some of the common garbage being spewed out there, like the "Obama wanted to raise everyone's energy prices." (The truth is that the policy he proposed would have raised production costs for suppliers by forcing them to conform to stricter environmental standards and that his plan saw savings in other areas that he planned on passing to consumers to help offset any rise to their costs that was passed on by producers. It was also almost all about energy like electricity and natural gas and nothing about gas for your car, but people are passing it around like it was.)

Plus, it doesn't help when things like the Drudge Report and other GOP lapdogs keep pushing the "gas was less than $2 a gallon on inauguration day, and now it's way worse thanks all to Obama," and you get memes pushing "facts" like that circulating Facebook and such. The first part is true but ignores where gas prices were a few months earlier, and the second part isn't true at all. Bush had more of an effect on gas prices by declaring war in the Middle East than Obama has had. He's tried to contain the craziness in the Middle East some, but this was a confrontation building for a LONG time that was going to hit prices at some point. He was the unfortunate guy in office when it happened. But most of that doesn't matter to a lot of voters. They see the prices and think unfairly that the President can change it with a flick of a switch.

 

Poor Barack. Such bad timing.

 

I'm shocked that you were shocked. What president in this contentious age would have any kind of decent approval rating three years in? FDR couldn't pull 50 these days.

 

I'm most surprised by the reporting.

Obama's popularity won't be able to stand negative articles about the economy.

 

Good thing he's running unopposed.

 

You mean people look at Fudge for anything other than the links? Whatever for? Certainly not for coherent political guidance . . .