President Obama’s Job Approval Rating Continues to Move Downward(Harris poll 43%; 57% Negatives)

New York, N.Y. — November 16, 2009 — As President Obama continues his trip through Asia this week, he is trying to sell both himself and his policies on the other side of the world. When he makes it back to the United States, he may have to do the same type of sell here as his approval ratings continue their downward spiral with Americans believing that the country as a whole is moving in the wrong direction.

The President, and Congress for that matter, need to do something positive in the eyes of the American public to stand a chance of increasing their approval numbers in the near future.

This month, just over two in five Americans (43%) give the president positive ratings on the job he is doing while 57% give him negative ratings. This is down from last month when 45% gave President Obama positive ratings and 55% gave him negative marks and it continues the steady downward trend that has been happening since June.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,303 adults surveyed online between November 2 and 11, 2009 by Harris Interactive. When the president’s approval rating is broken down by party, it’s not surprising that over three-quarters of Democrats (77%) and just one in ten Republicans (10%) give him positive marks. Independents, however, are where the president and his advisors need to be concerned as just 37% of them give President Obama positive ratings and 63% of Independents give him negative ones.

The president is also losing Matures (those ages 64 and older). Almost two-thirds of this oldest generation (65%) are currently giving him negative marks on his overall job performance. But, he cannot rely on the youngest generations to bolster him as 43% of both Echo Boomers (those aged 18-32) and Gen Xers (those aged 33-44) give him positive ratings.

One bright spot for President Obama is that his numbers are not as bad as Congress. Over four in five Americans (83%) give Congress negative ratings on the overall job they are doing while just 17% give them positive ratings. This is almost unchanged from last month when 16% gave them positive marks and 84% gave Congress negative ratings....

I think that Obama has already reached the 40% level when the Harris poll is adjusted two notches, one for registered voters and one more for likely voters. Add to that the subjective factors that this is a Harris poll and Harris is a confirmed Democrat pollster, and the momentum is clearly accelerating against Obama. Another subjective adjustment to be made is the fact that Obama is holding according to the last figures I read 75% of the black vote which means that 8% of his adjusted 40% belong to a category that probably is at its irreducible level. That means that about 32% of non-African-American likely voters support Barack Obama.

While these numbers will not be reported in this fashion they are certainly matters of open knowledge among professional politicians. If you are a Democrat politician with few or no African-Americans in your district you are facing an election in which you must run away from the titular head of your party who has support of only one in three voters. If you're a Democrat politician in a black district, you have more options but your district was never really in play anyway.

These more subtle realities explain why reports are leaking out from many left-wing sources that the Democrat party is disintegrating into panic mode.

It is a fascinating speculation to put oneself in the shoes of some of these Democrats who might be ideologues but who are careerists first. Under these circumstances they would normally triangulate and vear away from the party line. But this season the atmosphere in the Democrat party is different than it's ever been in my lifetime. I suppose there is real fear among run-of-the-mill Democrats about the power extrinsic agents like George Soros and his 527s, fortified by immense amounts of money, have to destroy maverick Democrats who go off the reservation in order to save themselves. These careerists are put in a real dilemma. If they follow Obama, Pelosi, and Reid they know they will go over the cliff. If they buck the likes of Soros and his sinister apparatus, he is likely to knife them from behind and he has the power and the money to do it. Oh, the humanity!

That is certainly true of the true believers. They will go down with the cause like a crazed jihadist. There are many others, especially the vulnerable Blue Dogs, who are perhaps not so fanatical and are careerists before they are ideologues. As careerists they will look at the landscape and conclude that the future lies with the Democrat party and they have no future, that is, no afterlife if they buck the party now.

Many of them instinctively think not of the private sector but of the government as a place to light between electoral gigs. In other words, if they are not in academia they are burrowed into bureaucracy as apparatchiks. They will believe that Obama will be able find them a place or that the liberal establishment will place them in academia or George Soros will set them up in some 527.

Whether ideologue or careerist, many of them will decide to stay with the herd as it stampedes toward the cliff.

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