Has President Obama Reached The Point of No Return?

Not many could have predicted this.

Just 53 weeks ago, President Obama stood triumphant as the confetti rained down around him. Reelected with over 50 percent of the vote, he and his administration stood ready to double down on the same failed policies that caused massive deficits, high unemployment, and shrinking paychecks in his first four years.

Today, he is but a shadow of the political force he once was.

Alex Roarty of the National Journal writes today that President Obama, weighed down by the disastrous ObamaCare rollout and the year’s numerous scandals, is approaching the “point-of-no-return in his presidency.”

“Historically, presidents whose approval plummets in their second term don’t recover. Such was the case for Harry Truman back in 1950, according to Gallup surveys. After reaching a high of 46 percent in July of 1950, the 33rd president’s approval never rose above 35 percent during the last two-and-a-half years of his presidency. The precipitous drop coincided with America’s involvement in the Korean War.”

Roarty uses history to show that when presidents see their approval ratings dip in their second term, they don’t ever bounce back.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas helps explain the decline:

“In a second term, once a president’s numbers decline, they never come back up,” Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, told reporters last week during a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “There’s a good reason for that: they don’t have a reelection campaign going on. They don’t have the air cover on air. They’re not putting back together a campaign in contrast to the opposition.”

According to Roarty, Obama looks to be falling into the same trap.

“A spate of surveys suggest the pollster might be right: The Pew Research Center last week found only 41 percent of adults approving of his job performance, while 53 percent disapproved. The 12-point split was the largest of his presidency, the survey found. Obama’s approval rating was also at 41 percent in Gallup’s polling last week, including a three-day rolling sample that showed it bottoming out at 39 percent.”

Democrats can dismiss Obama’s approval numbers as nothing but Beltway fodder. But, as Roarty points out, these polls have real implications in 2014.

Obama has made his number one political goal to win back the House. So far, he’s been stymied by Republicans holding him accountable for ObamaCare’s failures and opposing his massive government spending programs.

Democrats running in 2014 will suffer for their support of the Obama agenda that’s proved to be extremely unpopular with voters.