Obama. Is it 1980 all over again as he does worse in polls than Carter?

Barack Obama is facing his Jimmy Carter moment
By Tim Stanley8:14PM BST 25 May 2012

As Mitt Romney closes the gap, it is 1980 all over again for the man in the Oval Office.

Until recently, Barack Obama’s re-election was regarded as inevitable – in the same way that summer follows spring, or a monsoon follows a hosepipe ban.

The president’s poll lead over Mitt Romney was strong, while the Republican’s character was assassinated by a primary fight that permanently spoiled the reputation of his party

But in the last two weeks, things have changed. Obama’s re-election is no longer guaranteed; some pollsters think it is unlikely. Day by day, the odds are improving that Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United States.

What changed? For a start, voters are getting gloomier about the economy. Joblessness remains high and debt is out of control.

According to one poll released this week, only 33 per cent of Americans expect the economy to improve in the coming months and only 43 per cent approve of the way that the president has handled it. Voters think Obama has made the debt situation and health care worse.

The man who conducted the poll – Democrat Peter Hart – concluded that “Obama’s chances for re-election… are no better than 50-50.”

The president has tried to distract from America’s economic misery by playing up the so-called culture war.

Earlier in the year he decided that he would force Catholic employers to provide contraception to their employees through their insurance plans, and he followed that swipe at social traditionalism by endorsing gay marriage.

This embrace of Sixties liberalism has backfired.

While contraception and gay marriage often receive popular support in national polls, Americans are far more conservative in the voting booth.

Thirty-two states have voted on gay marriage and all 32 have voted to outlaw it – even liberal California.

With Romney doing better than the president in key swing states North Carolina and Florida, Gallup has publicly stated that Obama now has a higher chance of losing rather than winning.

In 1980, Democratic president Jimmy Carter faced an uphill struggle for re-election.

Yet, despite an index of inflation and unemployment far higher than Obama’s, he was actually doing slightly better in the polls. In March of that year, Carter led his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, by around 25 per cent.

None the less, Carter eventually suffered a landslide defeat. The scale of his humiliation was hidden by the fact that people were unwilling to commit themselves to the conservative Ronald Reagan until the very last minute.

It was only when they went into the polling booth and weighed up all the hurt and humiliation of the past four years that they cast their vote against the president.

It looks like Barack Obama will be the Jimmy Carter of 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-Obama-is-facing-his-Jimmy-Carter-moment.html

From the British Newspaper, The Telegraph. Looks like even the Europeans are losing faith in Obama.

Can the Obamaloons continue to post graphs of the great economic prosperity sphere under Obama?