Posted on 11/02/2011 11:41:29 PM PDT by neverdem
Last week’s column asserting that the president is unelectable has triggered strong responses. Democrats, in particular, seem to think my judgment is premature. It strikes them as ridiculous that anyone could make such a “bold prediction” so far in advance of the 2012 election. Hey, that’s what we do, as seasoned political professionals, as pollsters. But I must stress that I am not so much making a personal prediction as drawing an informed conclusion based on all the numbers available. I do this in each election cycle for other candidates, and it’s time to make the call on President Obama.
Whenever I have an incumbent client running for reelection, I insist on a viability study about a year out from the election — so, in the case of the presidential race, right about now. Anything that I do for my own, I should do for the opposition. So here goes. First, I look at the polling results from traditional “deserves reelection” questions, the gold standard of viability testing. The most recent nationwide public poll I could find was one conducted by Quinnipiac University early last month. It showed 42 percent saying the president deserves reelection while 54 percent say he doesn’t. While this reelect number by itself is not necessarily a doomsday figure, it’s the 54 percent on the con side that’s a killer. Most often, there is a large undecided percentage, but here it’s only 4 points. Voters have closed their minds — and the book on this president. It ensures that when Obama faces a Republican nominee, the undecided voters in early polling will eventually vote against an undeserved reelection.
The second numbers I peruse are perceptions of accomplishments. Eventually, Republicans will ask voters, “What has Barack Obama really accomplished?” and he must answer. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in his first year found that only 14 percent of all voters felt he had accomplished “a great deal ” during his initial nine months in office, his “salad days.” I cannot find evidence that the same question has been asked lately, but is there any chance that the result would be much different? In its Moving America Forward manifesto, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says Obama, with help from congressional Democrats, has five accomplishments: created private sector jobs, reduced debt, kept taxes low, passed a healthcare plan and reformed Wall Street. That’s the group’s best list. Do you think most Americans believe Obama has accomplished those things? Aside from passing a healthcare plan, he has done almost none of that, in the public’s mind. According to the latest AP polling, conducted in mid-October, the president’s average approval rating across those five areas is 42 percent. Obama brings no record of genuine accomplishment to his bid for reelection.
The third set of determinative data for an incumbent is perception of the direction of the nation or state. Everyone knows this is the biggest problem for Obama. The latest CBS/New York Times poll has the “right direction” at 21 percent. It hasn’t been above 30 percent since the early summer. Incumbents simply don’t get reelected when three-fourths of the electorate see things “seriously off” on the “wrong track.” Even if Obama’s approval ratings or likability were better, he could not overcome the negative sentiment that demands a change in direction. Americans are going to demand and get change next November.
So Obama fails on all counts. The numbers say that voters don’t think he deserves reelection, he has no meaningful accomplishments, and the nation is headed off in the wrong direction under his watch. He is simply not viable by any measure. That’s an empirically informed, hard-nosed judgment. This isn’t a movie or fantasy tale where a miracle occurs at the last moment to save the day. If Democrat campaign professionals don’t start acknowledging the same, and intervening, they risk Obama bringing down their entire ticket.
David Hill is a pollster that has worked for Republican candidates and causes since 1984.
The Democrats are going have to ask Obama not to run for re-election. In the end, he will do as they ask.
I cannot underestimate the Republicans’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, however!
This nomination contest is shaping up to produce a shockingly weak nominee.
The nation will never accept a socialistic agenda, it will protest, it will literally call in sick.
America will not accept Obama, he can try all he wants with his stimulus agendas but America absolutely will never convert to socialism.
obama is the problem, its not the economy, its because Obama has a failed ideology that is incompatible with America, not ten terms as POTUS will his ideology work, it failed...period.
Obama doesn’t care about polls - he’s too busy implementing Alinsky’s playbook for a transformative presidency....Cain a rising threat? Freeze him and stop his progress...right out of the book.
If Obama really believed that the Evil Rich is the source of all our woes, why is he still mixing with them and accepting their donations? ...not very consistent.
I believe his numbers are too low and the Dems will find a way to bump him off the ticket and replace him with Hillary. I don’t know how they will do this but I put nothing beyond them. A health crisis? A scandal? Brither issue? If I was Obama what would I do?
1. Start a war and have the enemy attack us like Pearl Harbor. Then rally the nation to defeat the foe! Iran? North Korea? Both? Be bi-partisan and in War—get passed your socialist agenda.
2. Start a nationalist crisis—war in the streets. Bomb buildings—local terrorism. That way you can cancel the elections for the good of the nation. New laws to give power to arrest Tea Party people and set up camps.
3. Start a real Tea Party Party—a Conservative Party to split the vote so as to win. Like Ross Perot. Get Trump or a stalking horse to bleed away votes after you make sure a lackluster candidate (Mitt) gets the GOP nod.
4. Get Hillary on the ticket after bumping Biden “for reasons of health”. Re-invent yourself as a moderate. Toss a lot of money into the economy to make it look like a recovery has happened, dump oil from the reserves to drop price of gas—etc...
5. Most of all make every GOP candidate look flawed, imperfect, a religious nut, cultist, Sex fiend, crook, fool and an bigot. Use the MSM to do this like they did to Sarah Palin. Not hard for Obama.
Conservatives are doing a pretty good job of this all by themselves. There are too many folks with a 20 point ideological purity test ready to anathematize anyone who only scores 18 1/2.
Any of our guys would be far preferable to Obama. The key for all of them is having simultaneous control of Congress, and especially a working conservative majority in the Senate capable of defeating a filibuster. Lack of the latter was President Bush's achilles heel; Bush started in exactly the right place, for example, on education and health care reform, but got pulled left by the democrat Senate veto. Bush also tried hard on Social Security but ran up against the same wall. The same fate awaits whomever we elect in 2012 unless we have effective control in the Senate.
I want a candidate who won't self-destruct and who has some downballot coattails. Time is dwindling for people to prove themselves. Cain (about whom I am prepared to get excited) is facing the "non-self destruct" test right now, and so far is not handling it very well.
Interesting idea. You may be right. I would have thought the Dems would be distancing themselves from the OWS crowd, but instead they're doing just the opposite.
Well, I don’t think odds are that he will be re-elected, but I don’t think it’s the slam dunk this article says it is either.
Why? Many polls still show O beating all/any Repub (yeah, their methods are dubious), and there is the 47% who live off the gov. dole.
Never underestimate the ignorance and stupidity of a non-thinking populace brainwashed for life by the educational system and media. And the percentage in that catagory is only increasing daily. Along with the illegals.
Add to that what others have said about the media’s all-out effort to destroy any Repub candidate...
Add even more that some states are canning the electoral votes of a state going to one candidate....
And then add to that the strong possibility that O will declare martial law and cancel the election, and I’d say the election still hangs in the balance......
If Romney is nominated, it will be the same as ‘08....
Of course, this is just my opinion.......
“Bammy’s “electability” or whatever...will be “determined” by the Rinocracy....not what We the People have to say about it.
The problem at hand here is far greater than any want to imagine
His people will just manufacture the numbers....bank on it.
That has been said of almost every president since and including Abraham Lincoln.
People don’t vote for their own squalor. never in history. We are in a death spiral and voters know it. Unless there is real recovery in the next year, he is gone. There is no electoral path in this economy. Fl, VA, and OH are gone right now for the left, and they can’t win without those states.
People don’t vote for their own squalor. never in history. We are in a death spiral and voters know it. Unless there is real recovery in the next year, he is gone. There is no electoral path in this economy. Fl, VA, and OH are gone right now for the left, and they can’t win without those states.
LLS
Perhaps. But O is probably the first - or one of the very few - who would actually do it.
Obama’s problem is not one of objective criteria, as in “what has he done for us”.
His problem is that his character has been revealed.
Citizens on both sides of the ideological divide are questioning his mental stability-with reason. Those who aren’t afraid of him are embarrassed by him.
It’s not what he’s done or hasn’t done anymore, it’s who he is.
Who can see him as a uniter of the races now? Who can now perceive his worldview as benign to America’s interests?
The biggest story of the coming election will not be the magnitude of his defeat, but the fact that blacks, becoming more and more embarrassed by him with each passing day, will have stayed home.
The promise of the big jobs plan following his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, only to present BABY STIMULUS 2, revealed him to have an inability to listen to anyone-and completely validated those on the right who had diagnosed him as a malignant narcissist. It will turn out to be his biggest blunder in a blunder-filled presidency.
Sounds reasonable to me...albeit, one should not underestimate the lengths the left will go to retain power...these are criminals, not citizens...
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