Today on The Situation Room, CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger discussed President Obama's rapidly declining approval ratings. A question was posed by host Suzanne Malveaux:
MALVEAUX: What does it mean, Gloria, for the president to be losing out on these Independents?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it's a real possible for him. Remember that President Obama won the election with 52 percent of Independent voters. That number is down considerably to 43 percent, and Independents are the margin of difference here for him.
Now, the key to keeping those people is, right now, they are worried about the deficit. They see the president as a big spender. They see him aligned with so-called liberal leaders in the Democratic Congress. So, what he's got to do when -- after Labor Day is kind of show them that he is the kind of so-called post-partisan president that many of them thought they were electing.
The good news for President Obama in this is that they are not realigning themselves with the Republicans yet, because the Republican Party still has very high disapproval ratings.
Now, Jessica, you've been watching something as well, which it looks like to be a generational gap in these numbers.
Borger's choice of words was revealing. By using "so-called," she introduced an element of doubt as to whether Congressional Democratic leaders are, in fact, liberal. Synonyms listed at thesaurus.com include pretended, dubious, and questionable.
I don't see there's any question as to if the Democratic leadership in Congress is liberal. These are the folks who, spurred on by Obama, have given us unprecedented spending and deficits, expanded federal meddling in the private sector, and are now attempting to take over the one-sixth of the economy represented by health care. It's no coincidence that last July's deficit was bigger than that for all of 2007. Americans for Tax Reform calculated that this year's Cost of Government Day, the day on which the average American has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at all levels, fell on August 12, a full 26 days later than just last year.
I can only shudder in imagining what damage would be wrought if Obama aligned himself with real liberal leaders in the Democratic Congress rather than Borger's "so-called" ones.
