Why Bozo The Clown Could Beat Obama

Hand wringing over the electability of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates has replaced baseball as the national pastime. To listen to the political pundits, there is not a single GOP standard bearer with the mettle or the gravitas to oust Barrack Obama from the White House.

If the assertion wasn't so patently prosperous, it would be laughable. But the mainstream media has fueled the notion that the Republican candidates are so flawed, so intellectual bereft, so inexperienced as to have no chance of unseating the incumbent president.

Even Republicans have fallen prey to the crescendo of media blathering that has no basis in fact. GOP bosses and so-called political experts have openly pined for a white knight to ride to the rescue, suggesting New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or Florida Senator Marco Rubio or Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan enter the presidential fray.

Republicans need to quit looking at the 2012 presidential race through the media prism. To conclude that no Republican is electable, you have to suspend political reality. Polling data, history and an analysis of the last election suggest Barrack Obama is the most vulnerable president in modern history.

Just look at the president's poll numbers. They are as dismal as the economy. In the latest Rasmussen Poll, only 21 percent of likely voters strongly approve of Obama. Meanwhile, 43 percent strongly disapprove. By zeroing in on those with strongly held opinions, the data taps into the level of voter angst.

These results represent a stunning turnabout from January of 2008 when hope and change entered the American political lexicon. Back then, 44 percent of likely voters strongly approved of the newly elected president, while only 16 percent strongly disapproved.

According to Rasmussen, the negative ratings for Obama have plumbed nearly unprecedented depths. You have to go back to President Jimmy Carter to find this kind of dissatisfaction. No one should have to be reminded that Carter was trounced by Ronald Reagan, a candidate that the media deemed "unelectable" because he was too far right.

Rasmussen, a Democrat pollster who has been tracking presidential ratings for years, recently scored Obama's approval index at -23. That is unfamiliar territory but for a handful of presidents, all of whom were rejected by voters for a second term.

Many in the media like to point to President Reagan's low approval ratings in his first term to suggest Obama will recover. However, the media always conceals one important fact: Reagan's numbers improved only when the jobless rate began to decline.

That's why history cannot be ignored. No sitting president, except Franklin Roosevelt, has been given a second term when the unemployment rate was above 8 percent. In fact, in the last 12 president elections, no incumbent has escaped defeat when the jobless number was 7.5 percent or higher.

It is sheer folly for the media to gaze upon the August employment figures without concluding Obama's chances for reelection correlate with job growth: zero.

An even-handed analysis of the last presidential election scrubs the sheen from Obama's historic victory. While the president snared a lopsided win in the electoral college, he managed to collect only 52 percent of the popular vote.

In key swing states, Obama's margin of victory was paper thin. For example, in Ohio the president won by 217,000 votes out of more than 6 million cast. It was the same story in Florida, where Obama eked out a 144,000 vote margin in a state where 8.5 million people trooped to the polls. Virginia swung to Obama by 230,000 votes out of 3.7 million ballots.

As these numbers suggest, Obama' win hardly approached landslide proportions. Despite having every advantage, including the weakest Republican candidate in history and a looming recession, it was a surprisingly close election. In addition, he was aided by the highest voter turnout in 40 years.

The president will have none of these advantages in the 2012 election. His own base suffers from Obama fatigue.  While McCain was reviled by conservatives, the current GOP front runners have no such albatross. The unemployment numbers are unlikely to improve substantially before next November. Voter anger at the administration has reached record levels, approaching those recorded by George W. Bush.

As one measure of voter discontent, consider these poll numbers: Just 34 percent of Americans think the country's best days are in the future. More than 60 percent are gloomy about the outlook. That level of pessimism usually energizes voters to toss out the incumbent.

Barrack Obama has only one thing going for him. The mainstream media is solidly in his camp. The same journalists who failed to vet Obama when he ran for president will spend all their energy investigating, debunking and demonizing Republican candidates.

But voters are savvy. They can sift through the media spin. In the last election, the Pew Research Center polled registered voters and found that 70 percent believed that journalists wanted Obama to win.

The media won't abandon Obama this election. However, no amount of media campaigning can conceal the fact that the country is worse off under President Obama. Voters have seen the real Barack Obama and they are clearly in no mood to make the same mistake twice.

For that reason, those who dwell on electability of Republicans are obviously delusional about the political reality facing Barrack Obama.