The Obama narrative collapses
Several sophisticated polling analysts, including Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com and Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium are hinting that Republican prospects for the fall midterm U.S. congressional elections are improving. This is occurring despite significant advantages in money raised and spent by Democratic candidates and the various campaign organizations that support their candidates as compared to Republican candidates and their support organizations.
One key issue that seems to have bolstered Republican prospects is the collapse of support for the president’s immigration reform proposal or proposed executive action on immigration. President Barack Obama promised various lobbying groups for immigration reform that he would take action independent of Congress, as he has in so many other areas, including allowing 5 million to 6 million illegal immigrants (about half the total number in the country) to remain in the United States, without fear of prosecution or deportation, and with the ability to work legally. While presidents have some discretion in implementation of laws passed by Congress, the proposed changes made even Democrats nervous, enough so that the president decided he would delay his action until after the November elections. Why get voters even angrier at him, so that even more Democratic candidates for House and Senate seats go down to defeat?
The president has always been far more concerned with electoral politics than immigration reform itself (never introducing the subject in his first term in office) and when Congress did not act, the president showed his disdain for the constitution’s separation of powers with his promised executive action. It is supposed to be Congress that legislates, the president who executes the law (and gets to approve or veto acts of Congress), and the Supreme Court that interprets the consistency of law or executive actions with the constitution.
The second key policy issue on which the bottom has fallen out from under the president is his management of foreign affairs. The two subjects are in fact related for many Americans.
Obama’s current approval scores are at the lowest levels of his presidency. But rather than reflect on why he has lost the support of the majority of the American population, the president seems committed to doubling down in his last years in office — convinced that his way, as always, is the only