Scanning online news sources early this morning, NPR's headline leaped out: NPR Poll Finds Tough Sledding For Obama. We would add the same poll finds tough sledding these days for Democrats in general.
NPR’s Mara Liasson reports:
President Obama has hit a rough patch this summer, squeezed between a lingering recession and rising questions about the health care overhaul he has made the centerpiece of his first-year agenda.
The nation is close to evenly split in its assessment of the president's policies to date, and there is great intensity on both sides of the debate with dwindling numbers in the middle.
Those are the chief findings of the latest NPR poll of registered voters conducted nationwide Wednesday through Sunday by a bipartisan team. The pollsters found 53 percent approving of the president's handling of his job, while 42 percent disapproved — the narrowest gap of the Obama presidency to date. Most of the approving group said they approved strongly, and an even greater majority of the disapproving group said they disapproved strongly.
Here’s the NPR poll’s take on the Democratically-controlled congress:
But if the president saw his numbers down, Congress fared far worse, with just 7 percent saying they approved strongly and 25 percent saying they approved somewhat. A 61 percent majority said they disapproved of Congress, with 2 out of 3 of them doing so strongly.
Perhaps it’s time for the Democratic party to begin some long over-due soul searching. It could start by reviewing its unethical tactics during the 2008 primary for selecting Barack Obama when Hillary Clinton was clearly the people’s choice and follow-up with a close examination of the questionable procedures followed during the Denver spectacle that set up a rigged roll call vote to assure an Obama victory. We would also strongly suggest the party initiate an all-out effort to cleanse itself of sexism and misogyny. In the event of a public apology for all the above, those of us who left the Democratic party and registered as non-affiliated could possibly consider returning to the fold. And who knows? Democrats might even regain the respect of the American people.
