The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Approval Index has Barack Obama at -20 today.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).
He's been down before, but I wonder if we're seeing the start of some serious erosion in Obama support here. The 44% who strongly disapprove now exceed the 42% who approve at least somewhat. And when you follow the trends link you find that 56% at least somewhat disapprove of his performance, exceeding the percentage of those who at least somewhat approve by 14%. If I'm not mistaken that's the highest that percentage difference has been so far.
After 16 months in office, Obama has piled up a list of accomplishments that consists almost solely of things that a majority of Americans don't like. I don't find that to be at all surprising, since his political objectives are always the most prominent feature of his achievements. TARP was leverage for politically popular limits on executive pay. The GM and Chrysler bailouts handed car companies over to the United Auto Workers union, guaranteeing a continuing flow of union money into Democratic Party coffers. Health care reform is a work of art when it comes to capturing special interest money, from the pharmaceutical lobby to the AMA. These are all things that Americans don't like.
On top of all that, oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, and is now lapping up on Louisiana shores. Meanwhile, Obama has already gotten the biggest chunk of British Petroleum's campaign money.
Now, Obama is no more responsible for the BP oil spill than George W. Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina hitting landfall in New Orleans, but suddenly something sticks out. Obama always gets a pass while Bush always got hammered. Unfortunately for Obama, his high profile response to the spill has been his usual response to everything else – finger pointing. Oil has been gushing into the gulf for 36 days, and all we see is finger pointing.
So maybe Rasmussen is telling us that we're getting near the tipping point. After a while finger pointing just doesn't cut it anymore.
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