Did Reagan start off with a 76% approval rating, like Obama did? I don't think so. Obama fell further because he started out higher, from what I've read.
I didn't make up the "falling faster, farther" thing myself. I've seen it posted here many times, with figures to back it up. Maybe someone will post it again.
Friend, you keep crunching numbers and reading them like some sort of tea leaves. You're missing the larger point, and that is, Obama is unlike anyone who's ever held the presidency. He is NOT one of us. He has NO uniquely American narrative, and does not show any indications whatsoever that he has a cellular level connection to the soul of this country and its people.
Every single thing he does, and every statement he makes, shows clearly that he holds Americans and America in disdain. His default positions on every issue, and every subject are alien to average Americans.
No American president has ever behaved in this way, nor has any American president ever come out so frequently, and so strongly in favor of things that the majority of Americans oppose.
An incumbent president CAN NOT be re-elected with a performance record like that, and Obama shows no signs of changing his disturbing, off-putting narrative.
You've really got to get your head out of the scientific puzzle of numbers and come up for air. Look around. Listen to what people are saying. Observe carefully to get a sense of how people really feel about Obama. It's uniformly down, everywhere you look, including among rank and file Democrats.
Obama has already lost his mojo. It's gone, and he won't get it back. It was phony to begin with, so it can't be rebuilt now. No one, including his own supporters will believe him if he tries. Basically, he's been outed by his terrible performance in just the first year and a half. There's just no way to recapture what he once had. It's just gone.
Again - he's not even at the halfway point of his term. He's got nowhere to go but down from here, because there's no way for him to recover any of the support he's lost. The only way he could do that would be for him to make an honest course correction to the political center, but he's far too radical to do that. He's incapable of being anything other than what he is, which is a committed Marxist.
His party will not nominate him to a second term, because by 2012 he will have brought them nothing but near-complete political destruction.