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Polls Indicate
Obama Losing
Power
By Dick Morris
and Elleen McGann
July 24th, 2009
NEWSMAX.COM
Superficially,
the United States appears to
have a presidential system,
but in fact it more and more
resembles a parliamentary form
of government.
When a president loses the
approval of the majority of the
voters and polls reflect that his
ratings have fallen substantially
below 50 percent,
he loses his power.
In this context,
polls are like parliamentary votes
of no confidence in European
systems.
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While the government does not
fall if it loses in the polling,
it limps on until either its ratings
improve or it is voted out of
office at the next election.
President Bill Clinton was
called “irrelevant” after the
congressional defeats of 1994,
when his ratings hovered in
the high 30s.
George W. Bush seemed almost
out of power in the last years of
his administration, when his
approval dropped to the low 30s.
Now President Barack Obama
faces the loss of power that
comes with dropping
poll numbers.
The two early symptoms of this
creeping impotence are his
inability to pass the union
card-check legislation or to
force action on healthcare
before the August recess,
once highly touted
administration goals.
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As is usually the case,
the apparent cause of
these defeats —
the buildup of public
disapproval of both bills —
is not what is really at work.
Rather, it is the president’s
obvious inability to improve
the economy that is exacting
the daily toll in his approval
ratings evident in all of
the surveys.
Like the body counts that
mounted in Iraq and drove
Bush’s numbers ever downward,
the rising unemployment
numbers are stripping Obama
of his popularity and power.
Obama’s very activism in
promoting the stimulus package
in January as a cure-all has set
him up for failure now that he
cannot deliver on his
overblown promises.
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Unlike Clinton’s presidency,
Obama’s cannot be rescued
by good public relations.
His obvious failure to turn
the economy around drags
him down at every turn.
Will the group of moderate
Democrats that is increasingly
blocking his programs prove
to be a lasting coalition?
As long as Obama’s economic
failures continue, they will
grow and harden in their
opposition to his radical agenda.
Once their president’s
popularity tanks,
Democratic centrists will not
look forward to running in an
election defending his policies.
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The race to distance
themselves from his failures
will be on.
That’s not how
Republicans work.
Among the GOP,
the tendency to hunker down
and follow the leader into
oblivion is all too obvious.
The elections of 2006 and 2008
provide vivid examples.
But Democrats,
particularly those who sit
nervously astride red states,
are not made that way.
Their proclivity toward dissent
and independence, muzzled in
times of presidential popularity,
emerges when approval
ratings drop.
Despite having 60 votes
in the Senate,
it is a serious question as to
whether Obama will be able
to get his controversial programs
passed in the fall.
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The public mood is congealing
against his healthcare proposals,
and skepticism over the impact
of cap-and-trade on American
manufacturing is growing.
While voters are idealistically
determined to cover the
uninsured,
they are more selfishly concerned
about their own healthcare.
And they are loath to trust
the man who sold them
on the stimulus package when
he says that their care will
be protected.
More and more,
they are asking the very
simple question that Obama
cannot answer:
How is he going to
cover 50 million new
people without
more doctors?
The elderly are coming to
understand that his plan
effectively repeals the bedrock
guarantee in Medicare that
seniors can get whatever care
they want for free.
The opposition to healthcare
changes is building so fast that
Obama was forced to retreat
from his August deadline.
And it’s unlikely that he
will be able to make a successful
stand in September or October,
when his ratings will likely be
10 points lower than
they are today.
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