A presidency on the verge of a nervous breakdown: 5 key reasons why Barack Obama’s future looks increasingly bleak – Telegraph Blogs

A presidency on the verge of a nervous breakdown: 5 key reasons why Barack Obama’s future looks increasingly bleak – Telegraph Blogs

A presidency on the verge of a nervous breakdown: 5 key reasons why Barack Obama’s future looks increasingly bleak

By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: October 10th, 2010

Forget the myth of an Obama recovery. The past week has been disastrous for the White House and America’s increasingly disillusioned Left. No wonder the angry and desperate Vice President Joe Biden is talking about “playing hell” if his party suffers defeat in November.
Here are five reasons why the Obama presidency’s outlook is getting significantly worse, not better:
1. A new Gallup poll suggests the November mid-terms could result in the biggest victory for Republicans in the House since 1894
Gallup’s latest poll is absolutely devastating in its analysis of the Democrats’ prospects for November 2, projecting a 13 point lead for the Republicans based on higher overall turnout, and a staggering 18 point lead if turnout is low. In Gallup’s view:

If there is a widely disproportionate skew in turnout toward Republican voters and their national vote lead ends up being in the double digits, the Republican gains would be very substantial.

As leading election analyst Michael Barone noted, the Gallup numbers “suggest it looks like 1894, when Republicans gained more than 100 seats in a House of approximately 350 seats.” If the Gallup poll proves accurate, we could be looking at a GOP victory in the House of Representatives of absolutely historic proportions, a scenario frightening enough to give even the most seasoned Obama White House adviser nightmares.
2. The Senate now hangs in the balance
Rasmussen’s latest projection has both the Democrats and Republicans with 48 seats in the Senate, with Florida moving into the solid GOP camp, and West Virginia moving from toss up to leans GOP. Four states (all Democrat) are now in the toss-up category: California, Illinois, Nevada and Washington. This is a highly significant development, as this is one of the first polls to show the Republicans and Democrats neck and neck in the Senate race. Over at RealClear Politics, the current projection with no toss-ups, has the GOP and Democrats at a dead heat of 50 seats each, with a projected Republican gain of nine seats.
3. The economic figures are grim
On the economic front, the news has been unremittingly grim for the Obama administration over the past few days. The latest jobs data shows that a net 95,000 US jobs were lost in September, significantly higher than the 57,000 jobs lost in August. Unemployment also rose to 10.1 percent, up from 9.3 percent in August and 8.9 percent in July according to Gallup. Among Americans aged 18 to 29, that figure was 15.8 percent.
The influential Investor’s Business Daily is now warning that the United States won’t recover the more than 8 million lost jobs until March 2020:

At this year’s pace, the U.S. won’t recoup all those 8.36 million lost jobs until March 2020 — 147 months after the December 2007 high. That would obliterate the old post-World War II record of 47 months set in the wake of the 2001 recession.

This is extremely bad news for the president, as his party heads towards an election where his Big Government economic agenda will be the leading issue.
4. A quarter of Democrats have turned against the president
Last week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll had an astonishing but barely reported revelation – nearly 25 percent of Democrats now believe “a return to Bush’s policies would be good,” a staggeringly high figure. As The Washington Post reported:

Obama and the Democrats have argued that if Republicans were to gain control of Congress, they would return to the policies of President George W. Bush. Two-thirds of Democrats share that view and say it would be bad for the country. But almost a quarter of Democrats say a GOP-led Congress would take the country in a new and better direction or say a return to Bush’s policies would be good.

5. George W. Bush is now as popular as President Obama
As I noted in an earlier piece, President Bush is making an extraordinary political comeback, even though he is nowhere to be seen on the campaign trail and has kept completely out of the political limelight since leaving office. A new CNN poll reports a surge in popularity for the former president, who is now almost neck and neck with President Obama in terms of approval ratings. As CNN concluded:

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.
“Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush’s name while campaigning this year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

To describe this as a monumental embarrassment for Barack Obama, after relentlessly bashing his predecessor’s leadership and policies for the past 20 months, would be an understatement. As I wrote previously:

The CNN poll is of course deeply humiliating for the White House, especially coming just three and a half weeks before the November mid-terms. George W. Bush’s resurgence is in large part due to mounting opposition to the Obama presidency’s left-wing agenda, but it is also spurred by Obama’s image as an out of touch, aloof and elitist president, divorced from economic and political reality on the ground.

Tags: Barack Obama, CNN poll, Gallup, Joe Biden, Michael Barone, November mid-terms, rasmussen, RealClear Politics, Washington Post poll