By Dave Andrusko
If you are pro-abortion President Barack Obama you are probably not overly concerned with the new Rasmussen Reports poll showing that matched up against pro-life Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, you lose 48% to 44% among Likely Voters. Or that a Fox News poll has you down 46% to 44% among registered voters. “Every day a new poll” sort of response could be expected.
But there are other structural problems that continue to loom. For example, that while Romney trailed Obama among women by eight points (49% to 41%) in the Fox News poll, he lead among men by 14 points (52% to 38%). And the ‘war on women’ suddenly has Democrats on the defensive, which could quickly cut into Obama’s advantage among women. (See “A Reversal in the ‘War on Women.’”)
Let me offer some insights from two sources: William Galston, who served in the Clinton Administration (writing in The New Republic), and Josh Kraushaar (writing in the National Journal).
Galston makes the self-evident point that 2012 is not going to be a re-run of 2008 for Mr. Obama but writes in a thoughtful, insightful manner. Galston offers seven examples of how it will be different. Let me touch on three.
· Obama won’t be a fresh face with no record, but an incumbent who will have to defend his stewardship.
· Obama will have to (if not abandon) radically retool his phony baloney (my description, not Galston’s) ”promise to heal a polarized political system that was at the heart of his rise to national prominence, starting with his dramatic address at the 2004 Democratic convention.” In case you haven’t seen the polling numbers, Gallup has reported that “Obama’s ratings have been consistently among the most polarized for a president in the last 60 years.”
· Obama’s not going to experience the level of support among young people he did four years ago. “There is no way that the Obama campaign can expect to recreate the excitement that moved so many young and first-time voters not only to turn out to vote but also to work their hearts out for their hero,” Galston writes.
Under the headline, “Fresh Warning Signs for Obama,” Kraushaar looks at the Fox News poll and the latest Gallup weekly tracking numbers to address the “demographics is destiny” argument. This is the idea that even in a down economy, Obama is the favorite because of the decline in the number of blue-collar white working class voters and the growth in the number of minority voters.
His two-fold response is
“The [Fox News] poll, released Thursday, shows Obama with a brutal 34 percent job approval rating with white voters. That’s not necessarily an outlier: Gallup’s latest weekly track found his job approval rating at 36 percent with white voters. … And his approval with nonwhites–at 71 percent in Gallup, 65 percent in the Fox survey –is far from the 80 percent he tallied in the 2008 general election.”
As he should Kraushaar points to other polls with better results for Mr. Obama, although, as we have discussed, one important poll was seriously biased in the President’s favor, and that any poll, or set of polls, is just a snapshot in time. However, he adds,
“But what all these numbers suggest is that things have the potential to get worse for the president. And needless to say, with the Rosen flap and weaker-than-expected jobs data, this hasn’t been a good week for the president.”
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