It takes a special kind of Democrat…

It takes a special kind of Democrat to turn a Nobel Peace Prize into a Shrimp Taco freebie.

A couple weeks ago, Obama’s approval dropped to 41% in the USA Today/Gallup poll. Here was my quick breakdown on the polls findings:

Obama’s approval drops to 41%.

53% disapprove. (Got that number from RCP and doublechecked at pollster.com, since it wasn’t in the article)

His support on Afghanistan is down to 36% (it was 48% in February.)

More Americans support his handling of the economy than the war, and only 39% of Americans support his handling of the economy.

A record 43% says it was a mistake to go into Afghanistan after 9/11.

Also a record number disapprove of his handling of Iraq, though the article doesn’t specify the number.

I had a blogosphere exchange about the poll at that time with someone who insisted it was an outlier and much ado about nothing since it was not the Gallup Daily weekly tracking. At that moment, Obama’s weekly tracking was at 45 and his 3 day rolling average was at 44. Apparently those were rosy, all-is-well numbers or something. Who knows? In Obama world, you probably can just cross out the poll number, fill in something else, write the word “believe” next to it, and it is so.

(If you’re really that curious and/or bored, you can read the exchange here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/25tpdsk)

Anyhow, I only bring this up because quelle surprise…

Obama’s Gallup Daily approval rating dropped to 42% this weekend.

His disapproval was at 49% on Sunday and it’s at 50% today. (If you click on the graphs/screenshots in this post, you can get a clearer view)

His latest Gallup weekly tracking is at 44% approval (48% disapproval), and here are the 3-day rolling averages from that time period:

Aug 9-11, 2010 46 approve (47 disapprove)

Aug 10-12, 2010: 44 (48)

Aug 11-13, 2010: 43 (48)

Aug 12-14, 2010: 42 (49)

Aug 13-15, 2010 42 (50)

Here is how Obama is looking in some other polls (these are screenshots/charts from RCP and pollster.com. If you click on the graphs/screenshots in this post, you can get a clearer view)

As you can see, the last time Obama saw 50% approval in any of these polls was over a month ago. More than half of the country does not approve of Obama’s handling of the job. The facts are the facts. Obama is a post-popular president and he’s bleeding support.

Yet Obamaphiliacs still barge into TC, first spitting on our writers and commenters and then saying things like:

ellenray, on August 15, 2010 at 7:58 pm Said:

What you do not understand is that most Obama supporters (or those who voted for him) are NOT sorry.

Well, ellen, Obama supporters who are not sorry are not part of the majority of Americans right now which disapproves of Obama’s policies. So nobody cares how you feel about your Obama vote. See how that works? Turnaround is only fair.

And, then there was this Obama apologia:

suzanne&PaulS, on August 15, 2010 at 11:56 pm Said:

WTV: First of all, I dont hate Clinton at all – I’m simply saying that Clinton (HCR failed to go anywhere, etc) and his presidency most certainly contributed to 1994 election results. And as for Obama having the democrats all on his side, hardly! There are many conservative dems in both the house and senate who will not vote along with their fellow Dems at all – its been a struggle since day one, even though it shouldn’t be. the congress is far more conservative today than in 1994 – as are the American people. I’m just stating what happened. Why do you people get so defensive at the mere mention of Clinton’s name? You continue to accuse others of being ignorant Obamabots who won’t go negative on him (which isn’t the case, as you can see from plenty of bloggers and media) and must never be forgiven for voting for him. At the same time, you worship the ground the Clinton’s walk on, accusing others of CDS for even the slightest criticism. Your Clinton may be someone else’s Obama -

Ooh look it’s the ground the Clintons walk on. *worships reverentially*

My Clintons will never be someone else’s Obama.

My Clintons? Have always been ordinary Americans blessed with extraordinary opportunities, and have always been politicians. I never thought they were “too talented to do what ordinary people do,” and I never thought they were apolitical outsiders who were pure as the driven snow. I voted for Hillary because she was a seasoned pol who could get things done.

My Clintons are not infallible. They have had a cottage industry devoted to enumerating those flaws for almost two decades. My Clintons are human and imperfect. I would not mind knowing if they snore, but they were never deified enough to need that kind of pat “bring ‘em down to earth” humanization anyway (link to Michelle Obama before she got the traditional wife makeover).

My Clintons are intellectuals AND populists. They aren’t faux philosopher king (Obama) or faux cowboy (Bush). My Clintons are wonks who use their policy smarts to connect with voters. They don’t talk down to voters, they don’t talk past them, and they don’t dumb down policy talk.

As for the idea that the country is more conservative now than it was in 1994? See The Oprecious Fairytale.

Bill Clinton won by a plurality. He had his own Democratic Congress fighting him. Bill Clinton held down the fort in a Republica era. Speaking of which…

I’ve had enough of people with Clinton Derangement Syndrome repeating the talking point that Obama’s polling is comparable to Bill Clinton’s, so no worries. Enough.

Here’s why:

Okay, that’s not the only reason why, but it stands out in a class of its own. Here’s another…

January 2010:

Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., fears that these midterm elections are going to go the way of the 1994 midterms, when Democrats lost control of the House after a failed health care reform effort.

But, Berry told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the White House does not share his concerns.

“They just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

Obama hitched his wagon to the Reagan star, sneered at the Clinton presidency, and said he’d make the difference between ’94 and now.

Many of his apologists revile the Clintons with a passion. What exactly is their pitch right now? “Obama sucks as much as the Bubba we hate madly did” ? Sounds like a real vote-getter.

But, then again the closet conservative side of Obama would probably prefer to lose Congress. So maybe that’s the point of this “Obama and Bill Clinton, like two peas in a pod” talking point after all? Seems like a stretch, but it makes more sense than the Clinton-deranged faction saying there’s nothing to worry about because Obama’s presidency is like Clinton’s. Of course, what it probably really boils down to is a tacit admission from CDS-infected progressives that Bill Clinton was and is a president with massive voter approval, and they (i.e. progs) are desperate right now to draw any subconscious line between the Clinton economic record and Obama’s name, in hopes that the Clinton likeability will rub off on the Obama brand.

But, let’s go back to another moment from the primaries:

If sinking poll numbers, persistent unemployment, an unresponsive WH and Congress, and the egging on of anti-government backlash was the best Likeable Obama could do, why couldn’t we have just had a Clinton clean up after a Bush instead? We could have gotten some competent governance and actual center-left policies as a tradeoff for all our troubles.

Besides, as Susie Madrak put it, Hillary Clinton is our most popular living politician right now.

Oh, but hold your horses everyone, Newsweek had this classy tidbit last week:

But Foggy Bottom is a good place to boost poll numbers. She’s avoided major gaffes, and the major foreign-policy hotspots are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the heat’s on the Pentagon and White House. Anyone in her job would be cruising along.

Hillary is the most popular American pol alive and Newsweek was sold for a dollar earlier this month. So who is the one that isn’t likeable enough here?

Oh and just for the record, more Democrats, Independents, and Republicans view Bill Clinton favorably than they view Obama:

So much for O’s vaunted bipartisanship. It’s funny, because Bush and Obama both ran on campaigns to be uniters (not dividers like that Slick Willie and his uppity wife), and yet Bill Clinton is liked by a whopping 60% of Independents, just one percent shy of 90% of Democrats, and nearly a third of Republicans. The only people Bush and Obama ever united were the hard right and the activist left, who were already living in sin together for the purpose of hating the Clintons anyway. And, that was only to get into the White House. (Once they got in there, they unwittingly brought the country together in souring on their policy agenda. Oh, how the empty suits have united us!)

On the other hand, Bush’s favorability is much higher than it should be for a political brand that ran against the peace and prosperity of the nineties and indeed was successful in destroying both, the consequences of which the country is now actively grappling with today. 45% favorability, and that’s with Independents hating him. Here’s hoping he never recovers with Independents ever, but Congratulations to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid on their great strides toward achieving the impossible. They should just go ahead and open a GOP rehab facility out in the open next time. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, Nancy! Go ahead and drain that swamp!

Another very recent meme being fed into the koolaid stream that I have had it with is this (the link goes to the same Will Marshall piece I linked to in my last post):

Like Obama, FDR was called a tool of Wall Street, a trimmer, an opportunist. He was bitterly assailed for trying to rescue and restore the free enterprise system rather than replacing it with central economic planning.

The far left opposition to FDR’s New Deal wanted to tear down the entire capitalist system and pushed proposals for redistribution of wealth.

Upton Sinclair was advocating for factories and farms to be turned into nonprofit coops.

Radical farmers like Milo Reno’s Farm Holiday movement blocked highways, dumped milk on the roads and into ditches, were preparing for strikes, and stopped eviction sales by force and agitation.

Huey “Every Man a King” Long’s “Share Our Wealth” plan proposed taking all private assets upwards of $5 million, exacting a graduated capital levy tax on annual incomes over $1 million, and redistributing the money to give every family a homestead, $2000 to $3000 a year, pensions, and educational benefits for every qualified student.

Father Charles E. Coughlin did CBS radio broadcasts promoting silver coinage schemes and making anti-Semitic attacks on bankers.

Francis E. Townsend pushed for the government to give everyone over sixty a pension so long as the recipient was not employed and spent all the money within a month.

In May of 1935, Roosevelt told a reporter the following (from Schlesinger’s The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936: The Age of Roosevelt):

“I’m fighting Communism, Huey Longism, Coughlinism, Townsendism,” he told an emissary of William Randolph Hearst in May. “I want to save our system, the capitalist system; to save it is to give some heed to world thought of today. I want to equalize the distribution of wealth.” He cited Huey Long’s statistics and his solution. “To combat this and similar crackpot ideas,” Roosevelt said, “it may be necessary to throw to the wolves the 46 men who are reported to have incomes in excess of one million dollars a year. This can be accomplished through taxation.” He would raise the income taxes in the top brackets, and he would add a federal inheritance tax. “The thinking men, the young men, who are disciples of this new world idea of fairer distribution of wealth. . . . We do not want Communism in this country, and the only way to fight Communism is by—” The Hearst official interjected “neo-Communism.” The President threw back his head and laughed. To Moley, Roosevelt used the phrase “steal Long’s thunder.”

Enough with this nonsense of comparing today’s milquetoast “professional left” of Markos, Arianna, Krugman, and Hamsher to the largely socialist and communist opposition that FDR faced. The voices that dominate today’s mainstream activist left, such as it is, are advocating working within the capitalist system. They were not single payer hardliners. They were willing to settle for any puny public option (which was really a bait and switch)–and when there wasn’t even any puny public option in the final product, they all (with the exception of Jane) settled for just the junk insurance mandate and declared it a historic victory.

So enough with the BS that poor Obama is facing the same kind of criticism that Roosevelt faced. And, enough with the lover’s quarrel between Obama and the “professional left” that has done nothing to make Obama’s policies actually Democratic, let alone stronger.

You know who would have had the kind of REAL opposition that could have made her policies stronger ? A Madame President Hillary Rodham Clinton. She also would have had the policy depth, experience, work ethic, leadership skills, and populist fighting spirit to respond to that opposition by stealing its thunder. Hillary was our chance in 2008, and 2008 was our chance at Hillary:

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell
and I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I think the GOP is as harmful as it ever was. But, I will not do what anyone else thinks I should. I will not vote for Democrats. I will not vote for the GOP. That’s me personally–not telling anyone else what to do. Just saying I will not abide the Politics of No Place Else to Go. ‘Cause I’m mad as hell, and every day I see the consequences of not electing Hillary, I get more mad as hell.

It took a special kind of Democratic party to deny THIS woman the presidency at a time when we need her on the domestic agenda the most.