. . . at an all-time low. Based on Real Clear Politics's influential poll of the polls, his approval yesterday was 42.4 percent, still a tick higher than the all-time low of October 2011 -- 42 percent.
Several individual polls have dropped the president's job approval into the 39s. For the moment, we must treat them as outliers. In time, however, other polls may move . . .
. . . in that direction. For the moment, however, ten polls range from 39 at the low end to 45 at the high end.
The weird thing is that the two polls of likely voters (Rasmussen (44 percent) and GWU/Battleground (45 percent)) are higher that the average of all polls. Tradition says likely voters as a group are more conservative than all adults and registered voters. Not so, at least at the moment.
I spent a lot of mental and emotional energy in 2009 and 2010 speculating on when the president approval would drop into the 30s. It never happened. He rebounded from the low of October 2011 and, thanks to a good ground game and a relentlessly negative public campaign, won reelection a year later.
What's different this time?
One is Obama fatigue. More people are just tired of the dude -- his compounding lies, his constant refusal to accept responsibility, his insufferable narcissism, his inescapable omnipresence.
The big thing, however, is Obamacare. It's already hurting a lot of people, and when the employer mandate kicks in next year, it will hurt even more.
Maybe enough people will be mugged by reality this time.
Or maybe not. We'll see when we see.
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