VietPress USA (Sept. 14th, 2016): This article from Business Insider that Yahoo republished today. Let's have a look at this political scope in the coming Presidential election 2016:
Two years ago, President Barack Obama was largely absent
from the campaign trail. Prospective and incumbent senators and House members
shied away. His approval rating languished near the lowest point of his
presidency.
Two years later, the script has flipped. He is trying to
help elect the second-least-popular nominee in modern presidential history,
Hillary Clinton, to carry on his legacy in office. And he's perhaps her best
surrogate.
"Obama is the single most effective surrogate she has,
and I can't remember a time when an incumbent president this popular campaigned
this hard for his party's nominee," said Jon Favreau, the former director
of speechwriting for Obama.
Obama hits the trail again Tuesday, when he heads to
Philadelphia to campaign for Clinton as she rests to recover from pneumonia and
as her campaign looks to turn around a rough past week in her matchup with the
Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
In a Washington Post poll released over the weekend, the
president's approval rating hit an astounding 58%. That is 15 points higher
than it was in a Post poll from right before the 2014 midterm elections. And
it's the highest level since he hit that point six months into his presidency.
"He is the most popular Democrat in the country, and as
his term comes toward an end, the intensity of love for him only grows,"
said Steve Schale, a former Obama campaign state director. "'Elect Hillary
to protect President Obama's legacy' is a very powerful message for Democrats."
The threshold might seem arbitrary. But historical precedent
suggests it could bode well for Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state.
Early this year, Obama's approval rating hit 50% in the
weekly average from Gallup's daily survey. As of Tuesday, it stands at 51%. For
Obama, whose approval ratings have been stuck in the low to mid-40s for much of
his second term, it was a notable bump.
"While it's hard to pinpoint precisely why Obama's
approval rating has risen among Democrats recently, there are a number of
plausible explanations," wrote Andrew Dugan, a Gallup analyst, and Frank
Newport, the organization's editor-in-chief, in a post earlier this year.
One of the explanations, the pair concurred, was that
"the unusual status of the Republican primary race — exemplified in
particular by frontrunner Donald Trump's campaign style and rhetoric — may
serve to make Obama look statesmanlike in comparison."
"He reminds swing voters of the basic decency they miss
in politics," Schale said. "I believe a lot of the increase in his
popularity of late has to do with a visceral reaction to the abrasive vitriol
of Trump. They see Obama as measured and thoughtful, dare I say with the right
kind of temperament to hold the rudder of a nation through the troubled global waters.
His style creates an inherent contrast with Trump, and it is a contrast that
benefits Clinton."
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the National Guard Association of the United States 138th General Conference and Exhibition in Baltimore.Thomson Reuters |
Trump has come into Obama's crosshairs repeatedly as he has
hit the trail for Clinton. And with good reason: More so than at any other
presidential hand-off in recent history, so many elements of the current
administration's legacy are at stake.
The Republican nominee has pledged to undo signature
achievements on healthcare (the Affordable Care Act), the environment (historic
new regulations aimed at curbing climate change), and foreign policy (the Iran
nuclear deal).
Trump has sought to frame Obama's tenure as a disaster. But
the president's spiking approval ratings and popularity suggest that argument
might become more and more lost on swing-state voters.
"A lot of Republicans are misjudging the fact that
despite most of the country thinking the nation is on the wrong track, swing
voters have a more favorable than unfavorable view of Obama," said Tim
Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush's presidential campaign who has been
critical of Trump.
"So Republicans in swing states are succeeding — Rob
Portman, Joe Heck, Marco [Rubio] — when they highlight their independence and
their desire to roll back government policies like Obamacare that are
unpopular," he added. "But when Trump claims that Obama is an
un-American disaster, that might play on talk radio, but it isn't how voters
who will decide this election view the world."
Favreau said: "Trump has convinced himself that the Fox
News view of Obama is the public's view, so I hope he keeps making the
third-term argument."
Obama's approval ratings at this point are far better than
those of George W. Bush, his predecessor, off whose unpopularity Obama thrived
during his 2008 run. His level is most directly comparable to that of Ronald
Reagan, who in March 1988 held a 51% approval rating, according to Gallup.
That same year, voters selected George H.W. Bush — Reagan's
vice president — to succeed him.
"Yes," said Ari Fleischer, the former press
secretary for George W. Bush, when asked earlier this year whether Obama's
apparent rising popularity posed a problem for the Republican Party.
"Certainly, going into an election spring and summer,
it's better to have an incumbent president increasingly popular rather than
less popular if you're the incumbent party," he told Business Insider.
The numbers present a striking contrast to some data points
associated with the current Republican presidential nominee.
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Obama with Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.Alex Wong/Getty Images |
A Gallup survey earlier this year showed that 42% of voters
viewed Trump in a "highly unfavorable" light, compared with 16% who
saw him highly favorably. That's the highest negative percentage for any major
presidential candidate since at least 1956, according to Gallup.
"I've been doing this [since] 1964, which is the
Goldwater years," NBC/Wall Street Journal co-pollster Peter Hart told NBC
earlier this year, discussing the relative unpopularity of many of the
candidates at the time. "To me, this is the low point. I've seen the
disgust and the polarization. Never, never seen anything like this. They're not
going up — they're going down."
Closest to Trump? Clinton, whom 33% of the electorate views
highly unfavorably.
It helps explain why Clinton is attaching herself to much of
Obama's legacy. And Obama remains favorable to wide swaths of constituencies
that Clinton needs to turn out to vote in November. The president holds high
approval ratings among African-Americans (90%), Democrats (82%), Latinos (73%),
and voters ages 18 to 34 (64%), according to Gallup.
"You can't recreate the Obama coalition — she has to
build a Hillary coalition," Schale said. "But nonetheless, the
president is a motivator, particularly for African-American voters."
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