"Like Dukakis without the administrative skill"

Updates below.

Well, I managed to stay away from the blog for 24 hours. I will try to keep my posts briefer during the holiday week, but when I find something that hits me, I'll post it here.

Obama's numbers continue to drop; yesterday's Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll has him at -17. I'd love to see him drop to about -30. Passing this health care crap should help the downward trend.

Update on Rasmussen: Today Obama is -21, down from -17 yesterday. Fifty-three percent of men strongly disapprove of the job Obama is doing. He does better with women--39% of women strongly disapprove--why he does better with women, I can't imagine. Surely it's not because women actually like a weak man. Like I say--makes no sense to me. The worst part of the poll for Obama is the Independents--the idiots who put him into office in the first place. Today, 61% strongly disapprove of the job he's doing. Can we call it the Presidential Disapproval Index yet?

Interestingly, the Left is increasingly turning on Obama. Some are calling it "buyer's remorse." Right--who would have thought there would be a problem with electing a junior senator to POTUS? Freaking fools.

There was a scathing article about Obama and his leadership style that was posted on the Huffington Post a couple of days ago, written by Drew Weston: "Leadership Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator."

The article is a reflection about Obama's dropping numbers and how those who voted for him are becoming demoralized. Weston says that three things are costing Obama his popularity with his base:

• a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans
• a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything
• a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

Weston burns Obama's leadership style. It's the job of the president to be in the fray. It's his job to lead us out of it, not to run from it. It's his job to make the tough decisions and draw lines in the sand. But Obama really doesn't seem to want to get involved in the contentious decisions. . . . He's like an amateur boxer who got a coupon for a half day of training with Angelo Dundee after being inspired by the tapes of Mohammed Ali. He got "float like a butterfly" in the morning but never made it to "sting like a bee." Why is it you people on the Left just can't get over the concept of "style" with this guy? I guess it's because that's all there is--just a thin veneer of style. Instead of looking for a leadership style, you should have been looking for anything in his biography that showed you this guy even once demonstrated leadership--on anything.

Secondly, Weston says, Obama has no vision, no message. No kidding? Abortion, gays, immigration, jobs--the guy has nothing. The problem with the president's strategic team is that they don't understand the difference between compromising on policy and compromising on core values. No, Weston, the biggest problem isn't with Obama's "team"--it's with Obama. He has no core values. Or did you somehow miss that when he was being so thoroughly vetted for POTUS? And it's pretty hard to have a message if you don't really, in your gut, believe in anything. This White House has no coherent message on anything. The message on health care reform changed even more frequently than the interest rates on credit cards last Spring, and turned a 70-30 winning issue into its current 30-50 status with the public. . . . To be honest, I don't know what the president believes on anything, and I'm not alone among American voters. No shit, Sherlock. And this is a surprise to you?

And third, says Weston, Obama shows a preference for the lowest common denominator. An example: Want health care reform? Let Congress work it out, and whatever comes out, call it a victory. Health care, energy, financial regulation--settle for half a loaf on all of it.

Weston seems to think that Obama's biggest success so far has been on the international stage. Right--try telling that to the COP15 conference. He was a big, big hit there. But wait, says Weston, he's spoken with "great eloquence" to Muslims around the world. Perfect.

Weston concludes, and who can argue any of it?: I don't honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn't figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he's not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he's going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they're seeing right now is "liberalism," and they don't like what they see. I don't, either. What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November.

Update. When you have the Leftist rag, Time magazine, telling you it's time to worry about the polls, maybe it's time to worry.

According to the recent Battleground poll, just under two-thirds of Democrats say they are extremely likely to vote in upcoming elections, compared to 77% of Republicans and Independents. Oops, that might be a problem for you, Prez. They're calling it "the enthusiasm gap. Hahahaha. And in Time Rag, "just under two-thirds" probably means 25%. Here's an article about the Battleground poll in American Thinker: "The Battleground Poll and the Battle for America." The AT calls the Battleground poll "one of the few bipartisan polling organizations. The population sample isn't skewed either Right or Left, and the poll has proven "very accurate over many elections." AT reports that, in the same poll quoted in Time Rag, 63% of Americans describe themselves as "very" or "somewhat" conservative.

This also explains why Obama runs away from "labels" (all leftists do, and have for many years).

Time Rag continues: there are also signs that Obama is beginning to feel the taint of the long-standing anger against politics and politicians in general. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found in December that 61% of the country has only some confidence, or no confidence, in Obama having the right set of goals and priorities to be President. Ouch! That's the sort of thing that, only a few short months ago, would never have seen the light of day in the lamestream media.