WHERE OBAMA STANDS – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  According to Gallup, President Obama is slipping in the polls again.  From Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog:

According to the latest Gallup numbers, Obama's weekly job approval number was 46% through Sunday.

That's the lowest it's been since mid-December, when Republican "hostage-takers" forced the
Democrat to accept an extension of the Bush tax cuts that Obama now sees as a positive sign of bipartisan cooperation, not to mention job growth.

The current approval is even lower than the 47% Obama had after his murky State of the Union address that atypically provided no noticeable poll bounce.

He had been up at the 50% level into January, his first time up there since May. But then slid again to hover around 48% until the newest decline.

And...

79% of Democrats approve of Obama's job now. However, that's down from 84% in late January. His approval among independents dipped from 47% to 43%.

The Democrat's approval among Republicans, which couldn't conceivably get any worse, did anyway: Down another notch from 15% to 14%.

COMMENT:  Caution:  These are not terrible figures and we shouldn't be popping the corks just yet.  Still, an approval number of 43% among independents is nothing for the White House to brag about.

One of the things that's hard to measure in these polls is the issue of enthusiasm, or electricity.  Obama was elected in 2008 in part because his base was sizzling hot for him.  This was "the man."  Not since Republicans embraced Ronald Reagan has a base been as solidly behind a candidate.

That electricity has lost some voltage.  If it gets any worse, Obama may be running on the amount of juice used to power a smoke detector.  Some Dems have lost faith in him, as noted in the post just below.  The nation as a whole no longer sees him as unique.  His racial "first" is, by now, ancient history.  I would suspect that much of his "approval" number is soft approval. 

But Republicans haven't named their candidate.  Even if Obama's approval stays below 50%, he can still win, if the GOP nominates a clunker.  I recall the 1964 election, when President Lyndon Johnson won a landslide victory, even though it was hard to find anyone who liked Johnson.  But he was running against Barry Goldwater, who scared people.  The Dems convinced America that Barry would launch the missiles, and that did much to give Johnson a solid victory. 

And recall that Nixon, never loved, sometimes loathed, won two presidential elections, the second against George McGovern, who also scared people.  Just as Americans thought Barry would launch the missiles, Americans believed George would scrap the missiles.  Just as scary.

The GOP's choice of candidate will determine who wins the election.  The field is plentiful but not deep, respectable but not loved.  We need passion in a party that regards passion as sinful. 

March 9, 2011