Last week, President Obama’s job approval rating sank to 46 percent in a Gallup poll, matching the lowest weekly job approval rating of his presidency. Few Americans were surprised. Obama’s bumbling response to the BP oil spill drove the latest decline in his popularity almost equally among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
But another Gallup poll taken about the same time contained even worse news for the president. After a year and a half of “hope and change,” 49 percent of Americans consider the Democratic Party “too liberal” — compared with 39 percent in 2008, when Obama was elected. This is 1 percentage point below the all-time high Gallup recorded since it first began asking such trend questions in 1992. That high-water mark came in 1994, the year of the last Republican landslide. That year, Democrats lost 10 percent of their vote share among working-class people making less than $30,000 per year. Blue-collar disenchantment with President Clinton during his first term, particularly his attempt to pass unpopular federal health care legislation, helped catapult the GOP into a House majority for the first time since 1954.
Voters still don’t like the federal government getting between them and their doctors; a CNN poll earlier this month found that 56 percent do not approve of Obamacare. And most Americans are well aware that Obama’s $862 billion stimulus package pushed the national debt to an unprecedented $13 trillion, but has failed to put a dent in unemployment. Roll Call reports that the Democratic National Committee is now attempting to “recreate the fervor of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and lure those first-time voters back to the polls.” But 2010 is not 2008. With a sparse legislative record and no executive experience, candidate Obama could get away with vague, comforting generalities about a better tomorrow. The president does not have that luxury. He must defend a record and an agenda that includes highly unpopular government takeovers of the banking, auto and health care industries, as well as pending cap-and-trade legislation that will inevitably drive up the cost of energy.
If Democrats heading into the midterm elections are wondering how Obama managed to blow his 65 percent Inauguration Day approval rating, re-energize a broken and dispirited Republicans Party, and turn vast numbers of independent voters into angry Tea Partiers in less than two years, they need not look far. It’s the liberal agenda, stupid.
