
Talking Points Memo is a blog that was created by a far left ideologue named Josh Marshall. After his uneasy tenure as an editor at The American Prospect (a magazine that was founded as an answer to “the intellectual ascendancy of conservatism in the ‘80s), Marshall launched TPM. Before I get accused of idle rhetoric in labeling TPM as far left, it is interesting to note that some guest bloggers on it have been: Robert Reich, Michael Crowley and former Vice Presidential and Presidential candidate John Edwards.
I subscribe to TPM’s email list because I also subscribe to the adage, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Usually I scroll through the headlines in the emails and then drag it to my email’s garbage folder. But in the last TPM email, I saw a headline that peaked my interest. It read Approval By Numbers: How Obama Compares To Past Presidents, so I clicked on the link. As I read through the article by one Jon Terbush on the TPM website, I began to notice the spin. It seems that no matter how bad Obama’s ratings get, or how much he disappoints the folks who he is most beholden to (the FAR left), he keeps getting a pass. Honestly the guy is like Teflon; nothing sticks to him.
From the article:
By some measures, it’s been a rough first two years in office for President Obama, as the soaring rhetoric of his campaign speeches has given way to the unglamorous reality of governing. With the messy debate over health care reform and a slowly recovering economy steadily tugging his approval ratings down, it may seem like Obama is slipping toward a uniquely inglorious first term.
Yet despite all the chatter, Obama’s slide in approval ratings is really nothing special.
Okay, I get that. The left is going to spin that Obama’s unpopularity with the “common folk” in “flyover country” isn’t all that bad. They are going to compare him to Clinton and note that only JFK fared amazingly well as far as popularity goes; but as I read, I came across a couple of sentences that stopped me in my tracks (emphasis mine):
A look at how Obama fares over his first two years versus every President since Dwight Eisenhower provides a slightly jumbled comparison, yet there’s an evident downward trend for almost everyone.
In fact, the early drop in Obama’s approval is strikingly similar to that of two historically popular former presidents — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Okay, I get the Clinton comparison, but Reagan? Really?? Shaking my head, I read on. Then I got the whopper. The article purports that Obama and Reagan are nearly identical – not just their popularity ratings, but that because Reagan’s first mid term election brought about 26 new Democrats in the House, that is equal to Obama’s self described “shellacking” of 2010 where his party lost 63 seats!
The trend line of Obama’s approval rating is nearly identical to Ronald Reagan’s. Both Presidents slumped in their first two years, suffering large midterm losses; Republicans lost 26 seats in the House under Reagan in 1982, while Democrats lost 63 this year.
This is craziness and it smacks of a desperation that with each passing day is more palpable and evident in the way the MSM and the far left blogosphere is treating Obama. I wondered how long it would take for the MSM to resort to comparing the Anointed One to Reagan, but it looks like the blogosphere beat them to it.
But in 2012 we will see that the far lefties on the net and even the MSM can compare Obama to Reagan all day long, for it won’t matter to the electorate. In ’84 Reagan won 49 states, we will see that the Anointed One cannot stand up to that comparison. But all is not lost, because after 2012, the blogosphere can begin to “Carter-ize” their wounds. And maybe at that point, Obama can go help build houses for Habitat for Humanity…
Crossposted from Present Discontent
You can’t get bogged down with that ideological stuff…….. 😉
Antics: An interesting approach by them and you.
Is America ready for Socialism? Now, that would be an honest approach to their dilemma, but their president’s incompetence and failure is more easily denied if they don’t think about the concept, just as it is easier to deny that they are Socialists and their great hoax is terminally ill on the vine.
He’s Black, and nothing says affirmative action like letting an incompetent person keep his job simply because of his skin color.
@Skook, I hear ya, but the left will studiously avoid the socialist question. When I read this article, I was amazed at the ease in which the 2010 midterms were glossed over. To me, the midterms were a referendum on Obama’s socialism, but the left will refuse to see that all the way to ’12.
Our media might be giving Obama’s gaffes a pass but not true of the foreign media.
They have made a big deal out of his ”secularizing” American History.
*Remember a month ago, when Obama told the audience that America’s national motto was E Pluribus Unum, or “Out of Many, One?” Of course, this is incorrect: the national motto, since 1956, is “In God We Trust.”
Gee, why’d Obama do out of the country and misrepresent us so badly?
*Remember how, three times last Fall Obama kept leaving ”by our Creator,” out of this Declaration of Independence misquote: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights?”
*Remember a year last April in 2009 when Obama stated at a press conference in Turkey that we Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation?”
Well our media might have given Obama a pass each time, but the foreign media adds it all up and keeps painting us all into a very different bag than we are really in.
anticsrocks
4Reply to this comment
@Skook, I hear ya, but the left will studiously avoid the socialist question.
…..
They don’t just avoid it, but they do their best to bury it.
Go to http://senatereports.com/
Check out the scoring of the various Senators from when Obama was one.
Bernard “Bernie” Sanders the so-called Independent Senator from Vermont but self-described “democrat-socialist,” rates a 95% for voting with their Party.
Barrack Obama’s score for the same period was 96%.
When voting with Sanders is the basis, Obama ranked at 92%.
Only Sanders, himself ranked higher, at 100%.
LOL.
Think far lefties in the Senate…..
Boxer, 89% w/Sanders.
Feinstein, 85% w/Sanders.
Mitch McConnell, the Party Leader at the time, only 35% w/Sanders.
Thanks Nan. Those numbers are hard to argue with, that is why the MSM completely ignores them.
“when you find yourself in a deep hole, stop digging.”
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/15/can-you-dig-it
Can You Dig It?
I loved it when Clinton told Obama, “Please, go.” LOLOLOLOL