Barack Obama is a lame-duck president already, but he probably doesn't realize it since he is surrounded by leftist zealots who insulate him from any contrary opinions and shielded by the partisan mainstream media.  Obama's popularity began falling right after his election, and the percentage disapproving has exceeded those approving steadily since 2009.  Each and every voting bloc that supported him in 2008 has eroded by at least 10 points -- even the African-American voters, with independents and young voters dropping by over 30 points.  Approval on major issues (economy, budget, deficit, employment, etc.) has also eroded, with disapproval exceeding approval ratings across the board.

Despite approval ratings lower than any president's in recent history, the media push-polls are trying to sell us the idea that Obama is well liked and has a good chance to be re-elected, meanwhile ignoring any and all facts that do not support their partisan message.  The good news is that there has been a mass awakening of the American people, who now realize that the mainstream media has a decided leftist tilt and that media polls can no longer be trusted.

Meanwhile, Democrats want us to believe that Obama has been a tremendous success.  He promised to redistribute our wealth, and he has begun.  He promised to transform our health care system, and he passed ObamaCare.  He promised that his energy policies would dramatically increase energy costs, and they have.  He promised to appoint justices who think like he does to the Supreme Court, and he has.  He promised to pull American troops out of Iraq, regardless of the situation on the ground, and he has.  He made many promises that he is trying to keep, but we just didn't listen closely enough or didn't believe that he meant what he said.  Now that American voters have finally woken up, their opinion is that they don't like the country's new direction and would like to repeal much of what Obama has done!

There's been a running debate about whether we're in a genuine economic recovery and how strong the recovery is.  At the two-year mark, when every other postwar recession had been over or nearly over, this one is just now bottoming out.  In other efforts to improve the economy, Obama has nationalized two car companies and exerted unprecedented control over financial institutions with continued fear over the nationalization of banks, and he is in the midst of nationalizing medicine and education.  The administration is proud to have manipulated the unemployment rate to show progress, but Obama's people have all the while ignored that millions have given up hope and dropped out completely from the employment market.

Obama, meanwhile, has been depending on the economy to makes its normal, natural V-shaped recovery, while doing everything he can to undermine and suppress that recovery.  The economic crisis was caused, in large part, by excessive debt, so a big part of the solution should be to increase savings and pay down debt, creating the financial reserves to support a new expansion.  Instead, Obama and congressional Democrats rapidly increased government debt with the giant "stimulus" bill, which wasted the better part of a trillion dollars.  The United States' credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history.  The political/economic issue that defines the Obama recovery is the fact that the federal government now operates without a budget.  Without a budget, every major decision on federal spending, debt, and taxes has to be fought all over again in the political arena every few months, creating pervasive uncertainty.  The current leadership, with President Obama first and foremost, is doing everything it can to create uncertainty on all of these issues.

The president knows he is in trouble, so he has given up leading the country and is now focused solely on campaigning for re-election.  Obama has little chance of winning in November, but this does not stop the mainstream media from selling the message that he has a chance.  Fortunately for them, many voters are uninformed and can still be influenced by the constant media spin.

David Coughlin is a political pundit, editor of the policy action-planning website "Return to Common Sense," and an active member of the White Plains Tea Party.  He was educated at West Point (Bachelor of Science, 1971) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (Masters, Administrative Science, 1976).