Monday, November 7, 2011

Bonus FOD 2011.11.07

Think this is good news? Think again.
CNN Poll of Polls: President's approval rating remains in the mid-forties

Sunday began the one-year countdown to the 2012 presidential election when President Obama and a yet-to-be-determined GOP candidate will face off for the White House. A CNN Poll of Polls released Monday reveals the president's approval rating is still under 50%.

According to the CNN Poll of Polls, which is an average of the most recent national surveys, 45 percent of Americans approve of how the president is handling his job and 51% disapprove.

"Approval ratings are a useful measure of an incumbent's chances of re-election, but they are not meant to be a prediction of the vote in the next election," notes CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In Obama's case, for example, polls indicate that roughly one in three Americans who disapprove of him feel that way because he has not been liberal enough. Those people may not vote for Obama by staying at home on election day or voting for a third-party candidate, but they are probably not going to vote Republican."
I remain concerned about the 2012 election for several reasons. Regardless what you may think of obama as a person or as a president, he remains a skilled politician. There is a solid liberal/leftist/democrat base of somewhere around 40%, plus or minus. And of course he has the active support of most of the mainstream media, which will do whatever it can to smooth over his failings (heard anything about Fast and Furious lately?) and tarnish the opposition (see Cain, Herman).

But my biggest worry is the tendency of the republicans to shoot themselves in the foot. It's looking more and more like Mitt Romney will be the republican candidate. That could result in a rerun of 2008, when disillusioned conservatives stayed home in droves rather than vote for John McCain.

We all know how that turned out...


2 comments:

JT said...

Agreed. Worse, still, is the Cain circus. I like(d) the guy, but his sideshow has distracted from the real race. His handling of the situation makes him unelectable and he should GTFO now and let someone electable take on Romney or we are screwed. Again.

So, did you get a deer?

CenTexTim said...

re: Cain - I'm not so sure about his electability. Granted, he didn't handle it like a seasoned politician, but that could be spun to his advantage. I haven't seen a big drop in his support. If anything, there's been a bit of a backlash due to the hysterical overreaction of the press. I guess we'll have to wait and see how this all plays out.

re: the deer - if I'd got one it would have been splashed all over this blog. I'll have the full story tomorrow.