If the US President, Mr Barack Obama, keeps slipping in his approval ratings, as he has been doing the last several months, his goose is as good as cooked in November 2012. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Al Awalaki can come to his rescue. For that matter, all the noise on Pakistan hardly makes a ripple in the electoral scene in the US.
Starting off with an approval rating of 65 per cent in January 2009, Obama now has only 22 per cent of Americans saying they “strongly approve” of his performance as President.
There may be a full year to go for the US election, but primaries are barely two months away and critical States such as Florida are moving up their schedule to make an early impact. The Republican pack for the Presidential poll may still be unclear but all indications are that the Democrats are getting nervous, and for more than one reason. The apprehension that Mr Obama may be a one-term President aside, Democratic leaders are looking apprehensively at the Senate races — of the 33 seats in the fray, 23 are Democrats, including two Independents who caucus with the party.
REPUBLICAN CONTROL
With the Grand Old Party coming back strong last year to capture the House of Representatives, the nervousness about the Republican control of the Senate is well placed. The big question is whether President Obama will remain unchallenged in his party for the nomination, for the liberals and the left-of-centre within the party have started making noises, much to the White House's unease.
In fact, the thinking is that if Mr Obama continues his slide, those like Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin may throw their hats in the ring. And some even expect Hillary Clinton to enter the fray; she not only stands a good chance of winning the primaries against Obama but will also be a stiff challenge to any GOP Presidential combination. Any challenge to Mr Obama in the primary season means additional fund-raising, which will be difficult, not only given the economic environment but also because of the disenchantment factor of young Obama Democrats who worked so hard last season.
Even without any challenge from within the Democrats, Mr Obama has his hands full, and the political rhetoric of challenging Congress to give him the Jobs Bill is simply not going to work. For one thing, hard-line Republicans are not going to give the President everything he wants; and even if they do, will it make an impact before November 2012? Not likely, many feel.
FUND-RAISING PROBLEMS
Obama's problem is not just the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida but the battleground states such as Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia — all the states he carried in 2008.
If Obama is hanging tough with his Jobs Bill, it is not without reason. Unemployment in America is around 9 per cent but the White House is worried about the situation in the swing and battleground states, where the figure is much higher. For example, in Nevada unemployment is around 13 per cent; 11 per cent in Florida, 11 per cent in Michigan; 10 per cent in North Carolina, where Obama won by a whisker in 2008; and more than 8 per cent in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado and Ohio.
There are ominous signals coming from California and New York as well, two large states that the freshman Senator carried in 2008. California and New York are critical for Obama, not only on account of Electoral College votes but also for fund-raising. In 2008 the two states accounted for the top two contributors, with California accounting for $78 million and New York putting $51 million into the Obama machine. But this election cycle presents a very different story — so far, the two large Democratic states have contributed a paltry $8 million to the Obama re-election.
In most US Presidential elections, the bottom-line has always been clear — issues of foreign policy hardly merit attention; it is the pocket book that matters. That being so, is President Obama headed the way of President Jimmy Carter?
(A former senior journalist in Washington for The Hindu and The Press Trust of India, the writer is Head of the School of Media Studies of the Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University, Chennai.)