Readers of this blog and of EUReferendum would have noticed that I am not a great fan of President Obama's. Yes, it is personal: I dislike politicians who have no knowledge or understanding and who are so obsessed with a few ideas that they try to impose them on people by hook or by crook. Furthermore, I do not like his attempts to behave as if he were a ruling monarch and not the president of the greatest democracy in the world.
However, I cannot argue with the obvious fact that he won last year's election decisively. That, however, is not the same as winning with a landslide. President Obama got 52.9 per cent of the vote and carried 28 states as well as Washington DC but you would expect that. The Republican who could carry Washington DC has not been born.
That compares reasonably but not overwhelmingly with the 2004 election when President Bush got 50.7 per cent of the vote and carried 31 states. Not Washington DC, naturally enough.
What does a landslide look like? Well how about President Reagan in 1984 getting 58.8 per cent of the vote and carrying 49 states? Or President Nixon in 1972 getting 60.7 per cent of the vote and carrying 49 states?
It seems that the Obama victory is further from a landslide even than we thought. According to the census, although the number of those who voted went up from 2004 by 5 million voters, the actual proportion went down somewhat: from 63.8 per cent to 63.6. Not a huge drop, admittedly, but it does put pay to the notion that Barack Obama's presence galvanized the people of the United States.
He is merely a politician and from Chicago at that, not the Messiah.
No, not only was it not a landslide but 0's approval figures look decidedly dodgy these days. According to Gallup 0's figures of 55% approval six months into his first term is the third worst for any post-WW II president. Care to guess who the two presidents were who had worse approval ratings?
ReplyDeleteHint: The answer can be found here.
If you factor in the acorn sponsored dead who voted,and the spend(.6 billion against McCains pocket change) and the shameless racism reeling in afro americans and hispanics and the total ineptitude of the opposition (how did the party of Luther King loose the black vote to the KKK party?to do slightly better than GW Bush is OK at best.
ReplyDeleteNow we know why the dems were crying about the stolen election in 04, they thought they had bought/stole it and only (in their eyes) a bigger thief could have taken it.