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President Barack Obama’s approval numbers have dropped down to 50% over all with a serious loss of support among independents according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. The Washington Post also claims the poll details the disillusionment voters feel toward both sides.
The afterglow of President Obama’s reelection and inauguration appears to have vanished as increasingly negative views among Americans about his stewardship of the economy have forced his public approval rating back down to the 50 percent mark, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
In December, just after he won a second term, Obama held an 18-percentage-point advantage over congressional Republicans on the question of whom the public trusted more to deal with the economy. Now, it’s a far more even split — 44 percent to 40 percent, with a slight edge for the president — but the share of those saying they have confidence in “neither” has ticked up into double digits.
A new McClatchy-Marist poll is even worse for Obama with only 45% approving of his job and 48% disapproving.
If President Barack Obama had piled up political capital with his impressive re-election, it’s largely gone…
The national survey, conducted four months after Obama was re-elected with 51 percent of the popular vote, found 45 percent of voters approving of the way he’s handling his job and 48 percent disapproving.
That was down from a 50 percent approval rating in November and December, and the lowest since November 2011. It also was the first time that more people disapproved of his work than approved since November 2011, when his rating was 43-50.
Obama’s personal popularity also has declined, with 48 percent of voters having favorable impressions of him and 48 percent having unfavorable impressions. That was down from 53-44 in December. It also was the lowest since November 2011, when it was 47-49…
Just 34 percent of voters think the country’s heading in the right direction, while 62 percent think it’s headed the wrong way. That’s also the worst since November 2011.
All this as President Obama is pushing behind the scenes for a “Grand Bargain” based on cutting Social Security and Medicare, two of America’s most popular programs. Which may be his last “achievement” as President, cutting benefits for seniors and shredding the safety net. Though the poll also indicates the cult of personality surrounding Obama is in decline as time pushes him into the lame duck stage of his presidency and sooner than later out of office.
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But DS, the “little people” just don’t understand how vital and “courageous” it is to cut the benefits for the next generation of “little people”, so we can reduce spending on the children of the “little people” and “broaden the base” with fewer IRS exemptions for the “little people” – all taken together, to “do the right thing”, the “brave thing”, which is to lower taxes for the really big, really important people and their investments.
Has anyone suggested a national strike by both union and non-union workers for a day or two, so the “little people” might voice a little frustration over Obama’s agreement to cut earned benefits?
Nothing more courageous than kicking people when they’re down.
Thanks for the update, and no offense intended, but: SO WHAT?
For the past decade at least, but certainly increasingly since Jan 20 2009, NO fed politicians, esp the WH, give one iota of a shit about what their constituents in the 99% want.
Everyone who lived in cloud cuckoo land believing in
Tinkerbellthe Easter Bunnythe magical thinking that NOW that Bamz doesn’t have to run again, Bamz’ll really Really REALLY DO the “Right thing” by the 99%.All I can say: dream on.
Get ready for Medicare & Soc Sec to be cut and gutted… it’ll be for our “own good.”
anyone wanna bet against me??
anyone??
He’s got his second term, so what does he care? His primary responsibility at this point in time is to generously grease the skids for the post-WH gravy train he’ll be riding on. As for the way he’ll be remembered in history? As I said, he seems not to give a shit…
We spend more on our army than the rest of the entire world combined I am sure we can cut some spending. Dark People are more likely to go to prison than Whites for the exact same offense I am sure we can cut prison spending we put more people in prison than Russia or White South Africa ever did.
We could tax pot to raise cash.
Hey! Get your mitts offa the CIA’s main money-maker!
If SS and Medicare cuts go into effect the Boomers will be looking for a third party candidate also Asians and Hispanics live longer than Whites so SS is something they don’t want cut.
The narcissists in DC do care about poll numbers and while as Shoto points out he is termed out – Congress isn’t and Democrats who don’t want to get primaried are probably thinking twice now about adopting right-wing attacks on social insurance as Obama has.
They will still have the drug smuggling business unless home grown Meth and big Pharma’s Oxy cut into their business too much.
We could cut the CIA they are pretty useless. WMD comes to mind.
African American have horrible life expectancy rates I blame Obama locking them up in prison for that if Obama raises the SS age will the average African American ever collect SS?
Let’s hope.
Saboteurs couldn’t do more damage to the Democratic Party than Obama and his team.
If Obama gets his Grand Bargain* and guts SS and Medicare, the Democrats will get their hind ends kicked in the 2014 midterms, and the Republicans on Capitol Hill will be crazier than ever. Can you say “articles of impeachment”?
* Which will look just swell in the rotunda of the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Museum in Chicago. Paul Ryan will be the guest of honor at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
No…but thats the point to not let AA,poor whites,poor hispanics or almost poor groups collect or if they do collect funnel it to WALL ST so they can be scammed.
Maybe we should point out to the GOP that Asians and Hispanics live longer than Whites and yes a cut in SS affects us more but since we live longer it will be their tax dollars supporting us as our numbers grow.
Hispanics pay more taxes than we get back from the government but the GOP won’t believe that they will believe that raising the SS age however is a give away to Asians and Hispanics.
I have no numbers on how much tax dollars Asians pay vs get back from the government.
But the idea is to make raising the SS age or cutting benefits toxic to the GOP.
This is what happens when the two major parties offer a completely insane right wing nut job, and a plain run of the mill right wing nut job (aka Obama)
Problem is o is a follower not a leader, he follows the 1%ers instructions to a tee. O is to the presidency what clarence thomas is to the supreme court false hope worse than no hope by far.
Dems deserve to lose, and Obama deserves to be impeached.
Obama’s poll numbers are UP in a recent poll of the 1%. The only poll numbers that matter to O.
If SS isn’t cut something else will be. But sharing the wealth in the wealthiest Country in the world is not on the table. The poor and middle class will suffer first and foremost.
Cuts
Cutting
Cutting
Shredding
Cut
Gutted
Cuts
Cut
Guts
Cut
Cutting
How could there be anything left?
any polling done in the demographic that he longs to be a member of, so badly it must hurt? Not getting into that group is the only thing keeping this man awake at night.
approval rating there….. very high.
The only way to move Obama is to make it look like his actions will effect his standing with the 30% of voters who will never vote for him.
I can’t understand it, but what you say is true. He is like Costanza yearning for the approval of Seinfeld’s girlfriend who dislikes him. Why spend resources deporting illegal aliens? No one on the right will ever hear about it, much less believe it. There are many other examples of exactly the same sort of thing. It is a psychological condition.
T
Here’s the real punch line, Obombanation, Dragon Queen Pelosi, and Handshake Harry support the Fed and Treasury doling out $85 billion PER MONTH, to Wall Street, raising taxes on workers by $150 billion a year, while leaving Corporations and the top 10% untouched, and tell us they need to cut $85 to $100 billion from services for our own good. When you see pics of that scum smiling and laughing, you know what its about.
It is my take that the reason his popularity has declined is the obvious political motivations behind his sequester public posturing. Cutting off access to the white house for school kids while sending jets to Egypt is a perfect example of horrible optics. Saying that the cuts to the federal budget will reduce teachers when the feds do not really finance K-12. Overall, he has overplayed a hand that could have been done without the histrionics. He is a great campaigner but is lousy at governing.
I hope all those Congresscritters who are ON THE BALLOT IN 2014 read these numbers, and remember that Obama will be safely in the White House at that time.
Or his standing among the 1% whom he counts on to hire him once he leaves office.
That’s his REAL audience.
BTW, I don’t watch national news on the teevee, and our local “paper” is completely feeble. Is Obama out there making speeches about how sequester cuts would hurt “real people” [like the loss of home heating assistance, teachers, health aides, etc.] and about how Paul Ryan’s budget proposals make these cuts and more, while granting even more tax breaks to the wealthy? I thought not.
One thing that makes me crazy about military spending is the “frills” that could so easily be cut, even if they’re not up to the level of savings on an F-15.
For instance WHY do we have army, navy, air force & marine “bands” and choruses & whatever? And what does it cost for those damn “fly-overs” that seem to occur at every football game?
It’s not the optics. It’s the reality of hurting real people now and in the future, for the benefit of the 1%.
That’s the worst of it.
The lingering traditional Democrats are all that stands in opposition to the now increasing mainstream fear and hatred of the poor. I have come to expect it from the Republicans but to see it now across the board driving really punitive policies toward the poor and unabled is disheartening. That is what Obama has brought us.
I agree. I think it is pathological, more than just catering to the 1%. He seems to actually enjoy harming people. That is much scarier to me than just political asshole-ism or giving the rich what they want. A perverse desire to cause harm to as many people as possible for no good reason. I think they call people like that sociopaths.
This is the inevitable result of being elected by “Lesser of Two Evil” voting. The “Fear of Romney” voters are now facing up to Obama’s Republican Lite policies and they don’t like them.
Should Obama be successful in getting his Grand Bargain, he will likely get a Republican Senate to go along with his Republican House in 2014.
The polls cited have nothing to do with cuts to SS and Medicare, which are “on the table” only for those who follow these things closely. Most people see O correctly as a pleasant but feckless president. In addition, polls will make no difference in whether or not he gets his Grand Bargain. Only a Monica, a Katrina (or, ironically, the Tea Party) can save these programs from O’s dull knife.
Yeah he is going to get rich. What does he care?
Maybe it’s starting to sink in that all he’s doing is trying to be a better Republican that the Republicans, instead of doing what he ostensibly was elected to do.
Will anyone? There has been a rash of people dying from cancer in their 60′s like my Mom. If they are giving us all cancer with the contamination of mandatory vaccines. (not a conspiracy theory, see this old article on SV40 http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/02/002bookchin.htm) also see the book “The virus and the Vaccine” by Debbie Bookchin, Jim Schumacher giving a very detailed account of how these could have been contaminated up until the 1990′s.
So if we all get cancer (or insert another easily curable disease here) and die before the retirement age, they get to keep all the money they are presently trying to steal. Yes I said steal because I think that is what they are doing by claiming the fund is empty and or bankrupt.
The SV40 is only one potential contaminant. I don’t know how they are manufacturing these now, but please recall that the US govt has given vaccine manufacturers total immunity from lawsuits for any harm that may come.
Highly curable diseases include diabetes type two, obesity and related diseases. Please read Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You’re Not Sick, You’re Thirsty! This really works. Cured my allergies…get drinking folks.
I love that idea. Let’s do it!
During 2011, Obama’s poll numbers also took a big hit when he was courting John Boehner and trying to gut the safety net.
He’s back at it with the same result. For an educated man, he’s pretty clueless.
I’m one of those, too. No confidence in Obama whatsoever.
If that fool gets his grand bargain, he’ll get a GOP Senate in 2014 and leave with an approval rating lower than Bush’s. He’ll also push many seniors into poverty. That will be his legacy.
I think you need to wind the cukoo clock back a few decades.
1980, perhaps.
:D
No bets, it’s game over and the corporate fascists own it all. Even Baltic Ave. ;-)
I’m not taking that bet. That is what this idiot wants. If we had a decent party not intent on compromise and “doing the right thing to put the country on a sustainable path to fiscal responsibility” doncha know. Well then, then, they would tell zero what’s up. But Pelosi and Reid. Dream on.
So we all figured SS was ” safe” since there is this multi trillion dollar fund. Dream on. No guarantee for anything.
Obama is installing conservative poicies because that is what he was hired to do long before you knew his name. It is what Bill Clinton has already done and what Hillary will do if elected-nobody trusted her which is why obama got the nomination in 08
I think Thad is closest to the truth. Obama is so shallow his emotions operate at the level of a TV sitcom.
He does desperately want approval but thinks it will come by pleasing the media who have for generations been playing the tapes that really serious, courageous leadership is proven by knifing the base in the back and screwing the poor and the sick.
It’s a tired old narrative. But that’s the level at which his soulless mind works.
We thought it was “safe” as long as we kept voting for Democrats. We’ve known that was a false assumption since at least January 2009.
In the leadership of both political parties(DNC & GOP)are very wealthy people,so they represent their interest not ours.
Do you really think that these people will do anything that undercuts their interest & welfare.
Look,they will all pretend that they are for ordinary Americans & offer rhetoric to prove it but that’s as far as it goes.
It’s no coincidence that ordinary Americans have incurred diminishing wealth while the wealthy,almost all of congress’s personal wealth have sky rocketed.
Take a look at the minimum wage over the yrs,hardly an increase for minimum wage workers while congress gives ‘emselves cost of living adjustments every yr until the economic crashed occurred a few yrs ago.
I never voted for him. Ever!
I think that’s what I said?
At the time of the 2008 bailout, I remember Congressman Shimkus of Illinois stating that his constituent responses were 200-1 against the bailout. Didn’t affect Congress one bit.
Well,its good that you said that,the more people become aware
of the scam,and only then will change occur.sadly most of us won’t
see betterment.
Can this mean that some real chunk of the electorate has realized he is intent on cutting Medicare and social security? If so, good. It may not mean much that “liberalism” is a word emptied of content in our time–but at least some of the barely-conscious idolators MUST realize that cuts in these programs that he is intent on effecting–another huge gift to business before he terms out and joins them–affect them and theirs.
Hope so Matthew.
Are his numbers low enough we can start using the “I” word yet?
May Day!! A day of revolutionary action, not debt-slave drudgery, for the 99%
http://www.nycga.net/events/peoples-planning-meeting-for-may-day-reunion-comunitaria-para-planear-el-1-de-mayo-2/
They mean to steal our benefits to keep the government going. Obama as usual is ahead of the curve in terms of wanting to destroy incomes for existing retirees, a form of elderly genocide. We though we elected FDR but we got Robert Mugabe instead.
They don’t work for us, they work for corporations. The few who don’t succumb to this are a tiny voice wailing in the wilderness.