The liberal news media have praised each huge, costly bill passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Barack Obama as a great “victory” for the president. The passage of the $862 billion “stimulus” last year, as well as this year’s passage of trillion-dollar-plus ObamaCare and the financial reform bill, were all touted as big accomplishments.
So with all those “victories” under the president’s belt, the media seem baffled that his poll numbers continue to drop.
Mr. Obama is having the “most productive first term” of any president in more than four decades, MSNBC reported. “Yet the president’s popularity and his party’s prospects have dimmed, not soared, with the legislative achievements … .”
The three most recent major surveys show the public generally does not approve of the job President Obama is doing. Rasmussen Reports puts his job approval at 45 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. In a Gallup poll, the president has only 44 percent approval, versus 48 percent disapproval. And a Fox News poll finds 43 percent approval of the job Mr. Obama is doing, compared with 48 percent disapproval.
Meanwhile, in a majority of the five most recent surveys on voters’ generic preference for one party or the other in Congress, Republicans (who have been opposing the Democrats’ liberal agenda) are ahead – by as much as 8 percentage points.
Democrats often try to explain away bad poll numbers by claiming they haven’t “gotten their message out,” and that voters just don’t understand what the new laws would do. But on issues such as ObamaCare, there has been long-standing, widespread public opposition despite Democrats getting a big “assist” from their media allies to “get their message out.”
For instance, even now, months after ObamaCare became law, the four latest polls show the public is opposed to it by margins ranging from 11 to 13 percentage points. Other recent surveys show the spread against ObamaCare as high as 24 percent!
Also, Americans generally believe the stimulus money has been wasted – and it obviously has not kept unemployment below 8 percent, as the president promised.
The one possibility the Democrats do not seem to be considering is that lots of Americans just don’t like the massive, expensive legislation Congress keeps passing and that the president keeps signing into law. Democrats are losing popularity not in spite of their so-called legislative “victories” but because of those “victories.”
We’ll learn in the November elections exactly how unpopular those “victories” are with the general public.