Another gut-punch: The NBC-WSJ poll

President Obama's current approval rating--a godawful 41 percent--"isn’t far removed from former President George W. Bush’s position before the 2006 midterms," reports NBC News. The man who saved the American economy from protracted Hoover-like depths and freed us from Iraq is now about as popular as the man who unleashed the Great Recession and plunged us into Iraq.

On the electorate's part, is this fair? No, of course not. Still, Obama must share the blame. He simply hasn't kept his head in the game.

He makes an appearance every now and then; he announces some minor initiative, which only news junkies hear; he mildly chides the opposition or cracks a joke or two about these Republican ghouls. What he hasn't done is what he has needed to do for at least a year: repeatedly remind voters of just who is responsible for the economy's sluggishness, and of the opportunities we're missing--because of the thuggish ones. He has played nice with the opposition, and one should never play nice with gangsters and ghouls.  

Obama asked for this. The electorate's inattention and confused blame games may be shockingly halfwitted, but that's the electorate for you. Obama has always given them far too much credit for figuring things out on their own--the Noble Everyman Theory at work. Bullshit. As the Waco Kid observed to Sheriff Bart, the "salt of the earth are, you know, morons." The president's chief obligation for the past year was to forcefully educate or at least poundingly remind voters about who, precisely, has steeped us in such execrable gridlock. And in that obligation, he has failed. Miserably. 

He has failed not only himself. It's much worse than that. He has failed us all. 

"What makes 2014 so different [from past cycles] is that the voters are in a rebellious state against the whole Congress and the establishment in Washington," says Fred Yang, the NBC-WSJ poll's Democratic co-designer. Says his GOP counterpart, "The president is being taken off the field as a Democratic positive. When you have the most powerful person in the world [on the sidelines], that’s a big deal."

It sure the hell is. "Obama’s favorable/unfavorable numbers (41 percent/44 percent) in the poll are better than the Republican Party’s (27 percent/45 percent) and Tea Party’s (23 percent/41 percent)," writes NBC News. Yet "Republicans hold a one-point edge over Democrats on which party registered voters prefer to control Congress, 44 percent to 43 percent."

There's no excuse for that. Republicans aren't likely to remind voters that they're the ones who shut down the government, or time and again threatened a global financial catastrophe, or have blocked numerous paths to dynamic job creation, or have endlessly attempted to gut safety nets of which the body politic ardently approves. That's largely Obama's job, and he hasn't been doing it. Perhaps this poll will wake him the fuck up.

***

update: Even David Axelrod is openly worried, now that he's no longer chained to the WH happy-talk machine:

[T]he "real challenge," Axelrod said, is how do Democrats motivate base voters--young people and minorities--to participate in the midterm elections.

"We didn’t do it in 2010. If we don’t do it in 2014, it’s going to be a very difficult year."

And another two very long ones after that.  

A few weeks ago I read (somewhere, and I wish I had saved it) a nonpartisan article on how severely the WH's political operations had been gutted over the past year and more. David Plouffe and Axelrod gone; self-serving insiders in their place--yes men and women, mostly, which is lethal to any White House. That's a common ailment of second-term presidencies. If only the old crew--even wiser now--could be coaxed back into service.   

 

Comments

[merl]

We need a fighter, and Obama isn't one.

[Peter G]

Bully pulpit again. So Obama goes on the air and says Republicans bad. To be followed immediately by host of Republicans saying no, president is bad. Yesterday I read one of those thoroughly offensive little screeds from the left advising the president on policy by a certain Mr Eskow. Naturally it included the usual patronizing remark about how your idiot president at least finally seems to appreciate that the Republicans are against him and even policies they once espoused. To which I had to reply that if only the president had surrounded himself with third rate political amateurs such as Mr Eskow that certainly would have cowed those Republicans.

[Turgidson]

I agree with both PM and Peter, as far as it goes. Obama needs to try to drill that message into the electorate's brain. And there are times when it feels like he's not doing nearly enough.

But that doesn't mean he'll succeed. Obama giving factual-yet-partisan speeches about the braindead GOP is satisfying and all, but whenever he does it, the story becomes how horrified the GOPers are, and how disappointed in him the pundits are because he's failing to leeeeaaaaaaaad. The merits of Obama's remarks are almost always buried in the bellowing hysteria of the village idiots afterward.

At this point, he's a 2nd termer with just this last midterm to deal with, so he should indeed get in front of cameras and mics and make his case as much as he can. But that alone may not move the needle as much as it seems like it should. His bullshitting opponents and professional scolds are morons or worse, but they are persistent and numerous.

[P.M. Carpenter]

Gentlemen, there most certainly would be pushback. There's always pushback. Pushback is not a modern phenomenon. It's not unique to the Obama administration. Indeed, our greatest presidents, FDR and Lincoln, received the greatest pushback. In a way, Obama is lucky here, too. FDR and Lincoln's enemies were often quite sophisticated. Obama's enemies are idiots, a pushOVER compared to what some of his predecessors faced.

[Peter G]

Pardon me. I think my bitterness is showing. I think it is because I have heard the opinion put forward by Merl too often. No you didn't need a fighter. Fighters provide entertainment. Kucinich was a fighter. And achieved nothing. What you needed was a cool dispassionate intellect and by a miracle of impressive proportions the times brought forth the man. And then, like a Greek tragedy, the times brought forth the Harpies to punish the hubris of respecting the electorate. Any help from the left to compensate? Not on your life. What a godawful waste.

[bbkenn92]

You make so weary with all your " blame Obama" ALL THE TIME. It's " WE THE PEOPLE" that have gotten lazy along with a media owned by Republicans who don't even show anything that PBO is doing or saying. What a waste of the platform you could have had. I'm gone for good this time. Enjoy your bashing..

[Janicket]

Sorry, PM, but I have to disagree with you and agree with Peter G (with a nod to Turgidson's pessimism). It doesn't matter at this point what Obama says or does; the play is written, the players' roles are established wisdom, and hardly anyone in the audience notices, or cares if observed, that the entire GOP cast is naked. Do you seriously expect the media to report what he says, and actually explain why he says it, without immediately vitiating the message by turning it into he said/she said both-sides-do-it?