September 18, 2011 05:47 PM UTC

Time To Fight, President Obama

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

CBS News reports on their new poll released Friday:

As concerns about the struggling U.S. economy grow, a new CBS News/New York poll finds that President Obama’s overall approval rating has dropped to 43 percent, the lowest so far of his presidency in CBS News polling. In addition, his disapproval rating has reached an all-time high of 50 percent.

Views of the president’s job performance are marked by a striking degree of polarization along party lines — the vast majority of Democrats approve (78 percent), while even more Republicans disapprove (89 percent) of how he’s handling his job. But only 37 percent of independents approve, with 54 percent disapproving…

With just over a year before Mr. Obama faces voters again for re-election, it should be noted that Mr. Obama’s overall approval rating is similar to that of Bill Clinton’s (43 percent) and Ronald Reagan’s (46 percent) about a year before their presidential elections when they won re-election. Conversely, George H.W. Bush had a 70 percent approval rating about a year before the presidential election but then lost his bid for re-election.

Even so, it sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? Keep reading:

Just 12 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing – the same as the lowest percentage recorded in this poll, reached in October 2008, right before the November elections.

Dissatisfaction with Congress cuts across party lines. Republicans, Democrats, and independents all overwhelmingly disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

Though most Americans disapprove of both parties in Congress, they disapprove of Republicans more…

The New York Times editorial board helps sort it all out today:

The Times and CBS News released a new poll on Friday, and once again we were impressed that Americans are a lot smarter than Republican leaders think, more willing to sacrifice for the national good than Democratic leaders give them credit for, and more eager to see the president get tough than Mr. Obama and his conflict-averse team realize… [Pols emphasis]

Many Democrats are so gun shy that they don’t dare even to talk about raising taxes on the rich. But 71 percent of those polled said any plan to reduce the budget deficit should include both spending cuts and tax increases. And Americans understand that there are choices to be made; 56 percent said the wealthier should pay higher taxes to reduce the federal deficit.

It bears repeating that this is all entirely rational, and what the Republicans and some Democrats are proposing is absurd. The country has tried reckless deregulation and overly deep tax and spending cuts before. It brought more than one recession in the last century; caused the near collapse of the financial system and another recession in this one; and helped pile up the current deficit.

Mr. Obama has been making many of those points for months. But he has been doing it with speeches that, while eloquent, are often too long and nuanced, and then lack the kind of relentless repetition that is needed to drown out catchy but false Republican talking points.

Got that? 71% of Americans support “both spending cuts and tax increases” to solve the deficit problem. 71% of Americans support the solution that Republicans in Congress have declared a “nonstarter.” 56% say that wealthy Americans in particular should pay higher taxes to shrink the deficit–and Speaker John Boehner has again rejected any consideration of this idea. This support for tax increases is fully consistent with polling during the debt-ceiling debate showing that Americans wanted a “balanced” deal consisting of both tax hikes and spending cuts.

But of course, the headline this weekend is all about Obama’s “declining approval ratings.” Which is a truthful headline, but looking beyond that headline you discover a very different story–yes, an American public that is tired of Obama appearing weak. But it’s also a public that understands why Obama has accomplished so little in three years–a virtually unprecedented campaign of partisan obstruction against him–and supports Obama’s proposals, however meekly advocated or poorly defended, more than they do the Republicans in Congress.

At this point, perhaps the greatest threat to Obama’s re-election is his willingness to make concessions, well beyond the desires of the voting public, to a Republican majority in Congress that the public does not support. If 43% of the public is on your side and only 12% are on the side of your adversary, it’s a good time to toughen up your negotiating position.

We’re pretty sure James Carville would say it’s well past time.