I think it’s kind of funny that they are even polling that at this point.  There are still 2 years left before the campaign for re-election begins, and the average voter’s attention span and memory is about 3 weeks long.  If Obama gets something happy done in December 2011, if the economy is better by then (and I seriously hope it will be) then whatever people thought in February of 2010 will be forgotten.

If I was a Democrat strategist I’d think this was evidence to scrap our current stategy.

Then I’d be slapped by an higher up and reminded of my place. And nothing would change.

Polling against a generic, nameless/faceless opponent are next to worthless.

Er, IS next to worthless.

Great. I suppose this means the Dems have moved to far to the Left and should move back to the Center.</sarcasm>

crap “too far”

It’s just one poll, and you can try to toss it out as a one-off

That’s the caveat I stated right there; one poll is meaningless, but these results reflect realities that we’ve already seen. It’s been clear since day one that all the ills of the Bush Admin are being laid at Obama’s doorstep, and we’ve seen time and again that the American public has the attention span of a gnat.

Any result like this makes you want to scream that even one voter would contemplate that the GOP has the answer to anything after all those years at the helm.

There are still 2 years left before the campaign for re-election begins

Guess again.

Obama, Clinton, and McCain had all announced their candidacies by February 2007 - 21 months before the election.  Anybody following a similar timeline next time will announce by February 2011 - one year from now.

The Iowa caucuses are less than 23 months away… anybopdy who plans to run a serious campaign will announce their candidacy by mid-2011, at the latest.

Any result like this makes you want to scream that even one voter would contemplate that the GOP has the answer to anything after all those years at the helm.

That’s the thing. I’d be concerned if the vote in 2012 was a “no confidence” vote like the British Parliament and the question was “Will Obama have a second term?” i.e., he only had to run against himself.

But that’s not going to be the question. The question is, “Would you rather have Obama or Crazy-Go-Nuts Republican”?

@Pam #7

I think you’re right about the Obama bashing. I also see this as feeding into the post Scott Brown election BS of “those wacky liberals are taking over the Democratic party and Real Americans aren’t happy about it.”

I’m hardly in panic mode at this point… but November 2010 is suddenly looking like a disaster, with Bayh’s announced retirement yesterday.

Nevada, North Dakota, Arkansas and Indiana are gone; Delaware, Illinois and Colorado are likely gone; Pennsylvania is possibly gone if Specter wins the primary (he’s currently getting trounced in the polls)... if we lose all of those, that takes us down to 51, and guess who suddenly finds his Republican inner child no longer willing to remain shackled by the bonds of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party?

Yes… it is possible that we could actually lose the U.S. Senate this year.  Not likely, but a lot more likely than it was a few weeks ago.

The “Real Americans” here in MA? Um, okay….

Did everybody catch the student asking Hillary Clinton if she would move to Canada in the event that Sarah Palin became the next president?

We should all move to Canada.

http://bit.ly/ahQTbl

(satire)

#12
It was meant as a reference to the way Scott Brown’s victory was sold as a rebuttal of HCR. One senate victory does not indicate a national referendum on anything. That was my point, but I see your point. Real Americans don’t live in MA (I do, sorry I voted for Martha).

The good news is that Bill Clinton was in roughly the same position at this point in his first term, so if Obama can get his shit together the way Clinton did, he may have a second term too.  Just stay away from any interns, please.

If the question is does he deserve a second term, I’m with all the wingnuts in the ‘no’ camp, though for different reasons.  But that’s not the question that’s actually asked when we hold elections.  That question is: do I want to vote for this guy who’s ineffective, corporatist, and way way way too obsessed with placating the Republicans, or do I want to vote for somebody who wants to bring on Armageddon so that all the people who believe in the same sky fairy as he/she does get to spend eternity mocking the rest of us as good Christians would?  Easy answer.

He doesn’t deserve a second term, but I’ll vote for him because the other realistic options are so much worse.

I agree, Blue Jean.  1994 looked like an apocalypse for Clinton.  I think the Dems could suffer mightily at the midterms but it could benefit Obama as people will expect something from the new GOPers.  And I think libdevil makes a good point, too.  The “no” includes the right wingers who would never vote for him and the angry left (and by “left” I mean anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman).  Hypothetical questions don’t yield very reliable answers.

That said, Obama’s favorability in polls is actually higher than His High Holy Saint Ronald Reagan at the same point in his presidency.  (I think Media Matters pointed this out.)

He doesn’t deserve a second term, but I’ll vote for him because the other realistic options are so much worse.

This.  I pretty much always expected him to be a centrist, relatively conservative democrat (and this has cause many and repeated arguments with the husband, who still thinks that Obama is some kind of stealth liberal and if I just give him more time, he’ll get around to a progressive, liberal agenda and stop trying to play nice with republicans) and even I’ve been disappointed in Obama.  At this point, he absolutely doesn’t deserve a second term.  But, given the choice between him and an actual republican, I will vote Obama again.  Because the alternative is so much worse.

I feel the same way about my current congresscritter.  She’s okay, but she’s also a pretty conservative democrat, especially on social issues (she’s actually pretty good on healthcare and labor stuff).  And given the choice between her and an actual progressive, I’d vote for the progressive ever time, which is why I never vote for her in the primaries.  But in November, that isn’t the choice I’ll have.  It’ll be her and a republican, and again, I will not vote for a republican.  Ever.

And since Sherrod Brown is my senator and is pretty good, for the most part (and Voinovich is retiring—and will be replaced by another republican, although again, I’ll vote for the most liberal guy I can get), I actually don’t have too much problem with the senator who represents me at the moment.

They clearly laid out a two-term plan, and sold that to LGBT leaders as a realistic goal of some kind.

Is there any imaginable way in which “two-term plan” doesn’t translate directly to “fuck you”? I sure don’t remember the two-term plan for Obama’s “savvy” banker buddies. If Obama didn’t want to own the wars and the economy he should have you know, ended the wars and taken more than a halfassed poke at the economy that amounted to anything more than “1. give money to rich people 2. there is no two”

All President Lucy Holding the Football cares about at this point is coming up with a decently stupid excuse for why he just can’t not extend Bush’s tax cuts indefinitely and then he’ll happily hand his office over to the next officially Republican scumbag who can drag the country even further to hell.

The good news is that Bill Clinton was in roughly the same position at this point in his first term, so if Obama can get his shit together the way Clinton did, he may have a second term too.  Just stay away from any interns, please. wink

Obama is actually in BETTER shape than Clinton or Reagan at this time. They had approval ratings in the 30s in the first half of 1982 and 1994, respectively.

This is going to be more like 1982 than 1994—the majorities will shrink,  but held on to—especially in the House. It would require a swing BIGGER than 1994 to lose the majority in the House.

The media will spin it as a disaster but remember: only twice in history has the party in power NOT lost a lot of seats the first mid-term after a new President: 1934 and 2002. This is normal, standard operating procedure in American democracy.

It’s still his second term to lose; if the GOP is stupid enough to nominate a fringe candidate like Palin or some teabagger icon, President Obama may have a slam dunk re-election.

You grossly overestimate the intelligence and knowledgeability of the average swing voter.

Me, too, phil @ 14; me, too.

ks @18, my spouse and I have similar arguements.

I mostly agree. 

But a lot of this is just that the U.S. is in terrible terrible shape right now with the threat of worse financial problems ahead - no one is going to poll well.

Obama, Clinton, and McCain had all announced their candidacies by February 2007 - 21 months before the election.  Anybody following a similar timeline next time will announce by February 2011 - one year from now.

The Iowa caucuses are less than 23 months away… anybopdy who plans to run a serious campaign will announce their candidacy by mid-2011, at the latest.

True.  But the voters won’t start paying attention until arount the end of 2011.

DTG in STL says: Obama, Clinton, and McCain had all announced their candidacies by February 2007 - 21 months before the election.  Anybody following a similar timeline next time will announce by February 2011 - one year from now.

One thing to remember about the 2008 elections - it was an open election - no incumbent and VP Cheney wasn’t running to succeed GWBush.  Givent the volatile economic and security situation, I can’t imagine any serious candidate wanting to stick their necks out that far in advance for 2012.

This whole “I’ll do it in my second term” idea is reminding me a whole lot of that scene with Indiana Jones and the statue and that other guy in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Aladdin and Jafar in the Disney movie: “Throw me the whip/help me out?” “Throw me the treasure-thing first.” And he does and gets left trapped by the other person who now has no incentive to help him out.

Once the second term happens, he’s got nothing to gain from giving us anything.  If there’s still nothing of substance happened by the primaries, I’m going to assume he’s deliberately stringing us along until there’s nothing more we can do for him, and then go right to “what good would it do ME?” in his consideration of what to stick his political capital out for.

Obama’s re-election should be a slam-dunk.  After all, who does the GOP have to run?  Palin’s popularity is dropping like a rock.  Romney is despised by many for varying reasons.  Giuliani is done - can’t see him getting elected for anything ever again.  Huckabee would never make it.  Who else do they have?  Maybe Newt Gingrich? 

The GOP is too divided to agree on any candidate right now.  I don’t see how they’ll resolve the divide into anything remotely cohesive because every time they try to put forth a rational position, the wingnuts take over and drown them out.

I’d have Dennis Kucinich as POTUS. Now Obama is appointing people for a Bipartenship committee?
He cares more about Bipartenship/Rethuglicians then the voters who elected him.

The poll seems meaningless for SO many reasons.

Yes, I share the disappointment in Obama’s tenure so far. Pam is right that the time for a strong stance on LGBT equality was early on, when political capital was at a maximum and other more properly controversial issues like health care and banking reform would develop later on, hopefully with some solid Democratic accomplishments to champion going into the 2012 election. And none of this depended on getting consensus of any kind from bad-faith agitators like the teabaggers and today’s GOP.

At comment 29, yes, Kucinich would have been ideal. I think Hillary Clinton also would have been more willing to take on conservative opposition and eschew bipartisan agreement when it obstructed core policy goals, despite that she is (or seems to me to be) more moderate than Kucinich.

Alas.