Obama's Bump Is Nearly Over

Rasmussen's latest numbers on Obama have stopped the stopping of the bleeding on Obama.  Apparently.  I don't think the enthusiasm gap for Obama is going to return quite so quickly to pre-health-care-passage levels. My guess is it will take about 2-3 months to re-approach the original trend line.  Ultimately though, this is starting to look like a bump, which is good news for Republicans.  If this bump didn't manage more, it's not going to help Democrats in November, as we've long suspected it wouldn't.

The Strong Disapproval's trajectory hasn't changed, and the Strong Approval, clearly relegated to the farther left of the spectrum at this point, will probably bounce back a bit from this negative mini-spike, level off for a few weeks before slowly trending downward again.   It's going to take a good deal of "nothing more for the far left to applaud" for them to return to the doldrums.  Given the political season, a good dose of not much is in order.  Without the prospect of Cap & Trade getting anywhere, or immigration reform, legislative victories between now and November will be very hard for Democrats to come by.  So that leaves few avenues for Obama to pick up those approval ratings so that the Democrats can realize the benefit of President "It's not '94, you've got me" Obama on the local ticket.

Where will he turn?  Non-legislative accomplishments. Do you think it's a coincidence Supreme Court Justice Stevens is retiring now?  Obama needs the next big thing, and it needs to be something he has more control over.  What would be more perfect for him than a SALT III treaty (in progress) a nuclear summit (oops, Israel is, thankfully, not playing ball) and a Supreme Court Justice that he can say the GOP are being obstructionist over? In the case of the latter, someone with good legal credentials that would have little controversial baggage to hinder them.  Unfortunately for Obama, Goodwin Liu is already tapped for another posting  sarcasm>.