I really hope somebody gets this news to President Obama.
Dwindling support from independents has cost President Obama his onetime edge over a generic Republican opponent, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that found voters evenly split over his reelection.
The survey showed 41 percent favor Obama winning a second term, while 40 percent prefer a Republican getting elected in 2012. Obama held a 11-point lead in May, after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The drop-off in Obama's rating stems from disenchantment among independent voters. Just 31 percent want him to win another term, down from 42 percent in May. For the first time, a majority of independents (54 percent) disapprove of his job performance.
Remember, during the last two months President Obama has been going about his "adult in the room/Compromiser-in-Chief" schtick in order to win back independents. It's supposedly why he has embraced this austerity bullshit and why he proposed this so-called "grand bargain" that would've cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits.
Well as the Pew Poll shows, it hasn't improved the President's standing with independents, which instead has gone in the opposite direction. So why has his approval among independents dropped? Maybe it has something to do with the horrible jobs reports of the last couple months. And frankly independents are probably not paying close enough attention to the debt debate to understand who's being responsible and compromising versus who's not. All they know is that this debt ceiling thing isn't getting resolved and that the economy still sucks. This business about cutting spending and seeming responsible is all a sideshow, just fodder for beltway pundits who will still pretend that both sides are to blame.
All I have to say is that when this debt drama is over, the best course of action is for the President to put everything on the table to deal with the jobs situation, the same way he put everything on the table in dealing with this manufactured debt "crisis." Because unlike the debt, the jobs crisis is very real. And if it doesn't turn around in the next 15 months, the possibility of President Obama losing his job will be very real as well.