We're at the halfway mark of Barack Obama's first term as president. I say "first term" because I'm confident that this isn't his last. Conservatives will not want to hear this, but I've felt all along that Obama will be a two-term president, and nothing I've seen dispels that notion. My thinking is grounded primarily in two sets of data.
The first is expressed in the title of this article: 40 percent. President Barack Obama does not dip below 40-percent approval. Period.
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It will be difficult to defeat a presidential incumbent who can't seem to ever slip below 40 percent and, in essence, merely needs to muster another 10 percent at election time.
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If Americans were willing to elect a man as far to the left as Obama in November 2008 -- despite his background, his remarkably radical associations, and his highly troubling and still mysterious background -- enough of them will again.
Finally, that brings me to my second set of data: Obama is again surging in the polls, just when it looked like he might dip below 40 percent. (I recall one poll had him momentarily at 39 percent.) As I write, Obama's RealClearPolitics cumulative job approval is 51%. Yes, 51 percent.
That's stunning. After everything that has happened during this man's presidency, from nearly $1 trillion in blown stimulus to nationalizing GM to persistent 10-percent unemployment, and after the Democrats' trouncing in the November midterm, how could Obama suddenly pop above 50%?
With few exceptions, most presidential elections seem to turn on how the economy is doing, or how the public thinks its doing, in the months leading up to the election. I'm not sure Obama's base is that strong, enough for him to be able to withstand even a recession and persistently high unemployment.
