To someone from the New Yorker, President Obama has now repeated what his allies have said many times before: his popularity suffers because of his race: “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president.”
The president’s sentiment is even more pathetic than his grammar and diction (“there’s folks”), and it reflects as poorly as anything could reflect on his analytical power and knowledge of history — even, in this case, his own political history.
According to the Rasmussen poll (to cite just one of many concurring polls), on inauguration day, 2009, 67% of Americans approved of the president whom they had recently elected, and 32% disapproved. Only 16% “strongly” disapproved. According to the same outfit, five years later, on Jan. 20, 2014, 49% approved and 50% disapproved, four-fifths of them heartily disapproving.
At what point did the president’s race change?
