In doomsday column about Obama polls, Byron York forgets to mention Reagan
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
Washington Examiner columnist Byron York announces today that Obama's basically cooked; that he's pretty much doomed to be a one-term president. How does York know? The polls say so. Or at least the polls he references [emphasis added]:
We're fast approaching the halfway point in Barack Obama's term. With Nov. 2 behind him, everything the president does will be calculated to boost, or at least not harm, his chances of re-election in 2012. What's not clear is whether he fully appreciates how badly the coalition he led to victory in 2008 has frayed in just two years. A look inside his poll numbers suggests that if he cannot turn around some key trends, he'll be a one-term president.
But what does York carefully omit from his column? The name Ronald Reagan and the fact that at this point in his first term, the Republican president was polling below where Obama is now. He polled below Obama and yet Reagan, of course, waltzed to re-election, winning his second term easily. (The same comeback pattern held true for Bill Clinton, too.)
But in his column about how the poll numbers say Obama's doomed (how can he “save himself”?!), York carefully avoids mentioning Reagan.
Oh, and how else does York know Obama's likely doomed to be a one-term president? Because a Republican pollster, David Winston (the only person quoted in the column) says so.
Good to know.