‘Summer has slipped completely out of control for Obama’
Political analyst Charlie Cook, perhaps the most nonpartisan of that breed in Washington, takes a look at the landscape and predicts looming trouble for the Democrats:
“For those of you not addicted to the 1pm daily release of Gallup’s three-night moving average tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating in both their Aug. 16-18 and Aug. 17-19 averages was just 51 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. The latter sampling showed his disapproval up to 42 percent, matching his all-time low hit in the August 15-17 tracking poll. The 51 percent job approval rating is identical to two other polls released in recent days conducted by NBC News and the Pew Research Center. Today’s regression-based trend estimate computed by our friends at Pollster.com from all major national surveys show an approval rating of 50.7 percent and disapproval of 43.7 percent.
These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics, is that this is far too low.
Many veteran congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.”
The elections are still more than a year off; a lot could change between now and then. But that kind of analysis and the inside-the-Beltway sentiment it reflects can have an important and almost immediate impact. It means to make the Blue Dog Democrats, many of whom would be most vulnerable, much less willing to stick their necks out for this president on health care and other issues.
Which in turn makes it harder to get thing done, which in turn makes that kind of prediction more likely to come true.
Source: AJC
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