Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people with this.” — Barack Obama to Eric Cantor, July 13, 2011
And Obama did go to the American people over the fiscal crisis — repeatedly — since that time. How well has it worked out for Obama? Two polls suggest that Obama was right … he was bluffing. First, Gallup’s latest survey puts Obama at 43% approval, equaling his lowest weekly approval of his presidency, and lower than that of Bill Clinton during the 1995 budget standoff:
President Barack Obama averaged a 43% job approval rating for the week of July 18-24, tied for the lowest weekly average of his administration. Obama’s rating at this point is lower than President Bill Clinton’s ratings were in the fall of 1995 when he was embroiled in a budget dispute similar to the one Obama faces now.
Obama’s most recent weekly job approval rating is similar to his 44% of the previous week, but down three percentage points from the two weeks before that. The president also had 43% weekly job approval ratings in late June, in April, and in August 2010. His three-day job approval average for the weekend, July 22-24, is 45%, up slightly from 42% for July 21-23. …
Obama’s current job approval rating is now lower than President Bill Clinton’s was in November and December 2005, when Clinton faced off against Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich over a budget dispute, resulting in a federal government shutdown that had some similarities to the present crisis. Clinton’s monthly job approval average was 53% and 51% in November and December of that year, respectively, before falling back slightly in January to 47% around the time the conflict was resolved. Clinton’s approval rating then registered above 50% for the remaining nine months before the November 1996 election in which he won a second term by defeating Republican Bob Dole.
Obama has grabbed the national media spotlight at least three times with the White House press corps and two other times at nationally-covered town halls since warning Cantor that he would take his case to the American people. The American people remain deeply unimpressed. That’s also the takeaway from the WaPo/ABC poll from the survey conducted last week, although it missed a couple of the later appearances:
Obama still has a 43% approval rating because 40% of the American people don’t pay taxes so they love Obama because Obama wants people that do work to pay for those 40% that don’t work.
We are already hitting the point at which people are saying, “Why should I work so hard to make a decent living and try to get ahead when so many have everything I work for without lifting a finger?”
@Nan G:
It’s actually more like 50% of the people in the country do not work at all. Some of those are retired whose retirement income is not taxed, some of those are children or young adults in school, and some of those are people who cannot find work, or who will not attempt to find work.
So, then out of the 50% or so who do work and earn a wage, or those retired whose retirement income is partially taxable, just over 40% of them do not pay any income taxes, and a large portion of those even gain money from the government over and beyond what they paid in taxes due to the EIC and other positive tax credits.
So, in the end, just over one quarter, 25%, of Americans actually pay income taxes.