Obama’s eternal free fall continues

In a piece at American Thinker called “The Coming Landslide?”, Bruce Walker writes:

It may seem odd for someone who recently warned conservatives of overconfidence to predict that the November elections may well produce a landslide unprecedented in the lifetime of many Americans. But the indicators of just such a tsunami seem to grow bigger and more persistent each day. Polling data differs depending upon which organization is conducting the poll. So it is no surprise that job approval for Obama is at one level in one poll and at another level in a rival poll.

Ok, so far, so good. But then Walker continues:

The trend lines of all polls, however, agree: Obama seems in free fall.

Excuse me, Mr. Walker, but (as I pointed out the other day) if Obama were in free fall, he would have long ago smashed into the earth, i.e., he would have long ago reached zero percent approval. In fact, as one of the two polls linked by Walker, the Rasmussen, indicates,

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

Forty five percent of the American people approve of Obama. For heaven’s sake, Obama had a 45 percent approval rating six months ago. So there is no “free fall” here, or anything remotely resembling a free fall. There is Obama with low but stable approval rating.

Conservative pundits who keep using stock phrases without thinking about their meaning do not make this reader feel terribly confident about their judgments, or their predictions.

Apart from that faux pas, however, the Walker piece has some good phrases:

• Democrats who unwisely tied their political fortunes to this latest incarnation of the tired old mantra of “hope and change” now find themselves in the backseat of a fast car driven by a reckless teenager.

• Obama these days appears less like a smooth political operator and more like a tone-deaf radical leftist …

• Everything Obama does, everything his wife does, seems to show Americans more starkly how their vision of a Joyful Obaman Presidency differs from the reality of this disciple of Alinksy in power.

• Will November be the Waterloo of the Left? Nothing is certain, but conservatives have not been so angry or so networked or so active in ninety years. The left, by contrast, has never seemed so incompetent and unsavory as it is right now.

- end of initial entry -

James N. writes:

The problem with all the masturbatory excitement over Obama’s polls is not just that most people are bad at math.

The real problem is that they expose the disastrous condition of the nation.

Yes, if the elections were held tomorrow, Democrats would not fare so well.

But Obama and his inner circle are, I imagine, not so concerned with elections. They are concerned with destruction, and revolution. As such, the grim fact that 42-45 percent of Americans actually APPROVE of what Obama and his friends are up to is not cause for optimism—it is a disaster.

James N. writes:

Bruce Walker writes:

“Will November be the Waterloo of the Left?”

The Left does not surrender. Ever.

So Waterloo won’t do the trick. Think Indonesia, or Chile.

LA replies:

Really, a conservative analysis who speaks of the possibility of a single election being the “Waterloo of the left” shows that he knows nothing about the left or about politics. As though the left would be permanently defeated as a result of one election, or many elections.

That’s the problem with most of the contributors at American Thinker. They sound as though they began thinking about politics about six months ago.

Bill writes from Virginia:

The mathematically correct description of Obama’s popularity is that it is a monotonically decreasing function of time, that is, with the passage of time it either stays the same or decreases.

Paul K. writes:

You wrote, “Really, a conservative analyst who speaks of the possibility of a single election being the ‘Waterloo of the left’ shows that he knows nothing about the left or about politics.”

Indeed, the election of 2008 was considered the Waterloo of the right by the professional pundits, who as you say, evaluate everything from a historical perspective of six months. An exception is George Will, who often makes political predictions based on what happened 75 or 100 years ago, as if we were the same people and nation now that we were then.

Alexis Zarkov writes:

While Obama is hardly in “free fall” with respect to his job approval, he is below where he was six months ago. Pollster.com provides a graph that averages across the major polling organizations. In February his job approval was running at about 48 percent as compared to 44.5 percent today. The black line on the graph shows a clear trend down starting in late May. Before that his approval showed little month-to-month change. In other words, he’s now dropping at about one percent per month. I expect his major support groups with stick with him. Blacks at 90 percent, Hispanics at 60 percent, liberals at about 55 percent along with women in the 18 to 45 age bracket at 60 percent. Putting that all together, I don’t expect him ever to fall below 40 percent. His core base is solid and has nowhere to go. If the economy recovers, his ratings will go up, and he will most likely win re-election in 2012 unless the Republicans can come up with a spectacular candidate. Considering the dismal state of the economy, his current rating is very good, showing he and the Democrats have a winning formula for holding on to the White House. Congress is another matter. It’s quite possible the Democrats will suffer major defeats in November. Congress is unpopular, but not Obama.

LA replies:

Oh, wow—down 3 1/2 points in six months! That’s what they (not you) call a free fall….

But seriously, thank you for this dose of unhappy realism. Lots of presidents (and many, many governors) have been in the low 40s at some point in their first term, and then recovered and were re-elected, especially if their opponent was weak. The Republicans and mainstream conservatives are living in a fool’s paradise.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 20, 2010 12:10 PM | Send