Don’t stand so close to me!
That’s the siren song playing about Democrats running from “toxic” President Obama.
Rasmussen is not exactly high on our list of reliable polling companies. But we work with what we have and what the media uses to judge things, and within that context, it’s worth noting that your President — the one that the media keeps tittering Democrats must distance themselves from because he is so hated — has a 50% approval rating in Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll Wednesday.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Obama’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove (see trends).
The latest figures include 24% who Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing as president and 34% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10.
Fifty percent approval, and since more people hate him with a passion than love him with a passion (according to this poll and per the year of fake scandals your media though it would be good for democracy to pass on as fact), he has a negative 10 approval index. In the scheme of things, this means little. Yet, every time the presidential approval dips below 50%, the media and Republicans jump all over it to prove that their dreams really can come true.
No one brings up Bush’s approval numbers for context, with his low of 25% according to Gallop and the high of 90% after the terrorist attacks forever skewing his two term average. It helped Bush that the Democrats didn’t spend the years after 9/11 accusing Bush of the truth, after all, he really had been warned in advance that terrorists planned to use a plane to attack the US. Since Nixon, the media can’t seem to find their bravado and courage during a Republican administration, so it all comes rushing to the fore during a Democratic administration in an effort at redemption. Perhaps this explains why they have passed on Republican lie after Republican lie as fact (“IRS scandal”, “Benghazi emails” etc.).
Also, Democrats lead Republicans by two points on the latest Generic Congressional Ballot according to a Rasmussen telephone survey. Forty percent of likely voters would vote for the Democrat in their district’s congressional race, while 38% would choose the Republican instead. This number is too close to mean much, but it does defy all of the conventional wisdom going around town. Of course, the results of generic polls can change dramatically when well known names are dropped in the mix, let alone a lot of dirty money. But the idea here is that voters right now prefer what they are hearing from Democrats in general.
How this is possible when the media has assured us that Republicans have this locked up because Obamacare sucks so badly, I have no clue, except we notice that suddenly no one is talking about Obamacare anymore, now that it’s working. Apparently, the punditry couldn’t quite sort that glitches would be fixed and people would selfishly put their own lives ahead of partisan politics and dirty money induced hatred.
But to be fair, there are some states where both Obamacare and the President have been attacked so consistently and the people so misinformed about both that the well has been poisoned. So there are some states where a Democrat might judiciously distance themselves from the President. But this is not an overall trend, as is being claimed.
Remember these same people told you that the Obama coalition wouldn’t show up in 2012 because they were so “disappointed” in him. It turns out the media didn’t know who the Obama coalition were, and they not only showed up, but in record numbers. The trick is to get those folks to turn out in the midterms.
The media suffers from Hollywood syndrome — if it happened before it will happen again, the existence of all other variables is denied. So here we are being treated to all Presidents are like W, which means that W wasn’t so bad. All second term presidents’ party lose the midterms because the people like balance. Etc.
And Obama is toxic. We have been told this by the same people who told us how we all hated affordable healthcare because there was a glitch in the online sign up program. Yet, even after six years of endless smears about his birth certificate, his alleged Socialism, his race, and lies about his religion, Obama is consistently well liked and trusted by the people.
Obama did win two elections, the last one in a landslide, even as he was being relentlessly maligned. And the media told us that was a real horse race with King Romney who hated half the country. The media just doesn’t get the Obama coalition. They’ve been wrong about them from the beginning and they continue to be wrong, because they listen to the loudest voices instead of the majority.
Maligned? Yes. Toxic? Not so much.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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