Mallory Pernell, Staff Writer
Ideology: Liberal | Writing from: Texas
A hot topic in the news recently has been Obama’s dwindling approval rating numbers. When Obama first was elected and his rating was good, conservatives felt it was their duty to find any excuse to not acknowledge that Obama was the President: he wasn’t born here, he’s a socialist, he’s a Muslim (is this really an insult?). 
Yes, the same group that believed that if you were against the President in 2000 you were anti-American is now calling our President in 2008 a “granny-killer”, “the anti-Christ”, and of course, “Hitler.” And now that Obama’s numbers are dropping (although they are nowhere near Bush-end-of-second-term territory), conservatives see their chance to get back power and are picking up the anti-Obama momentum. Maybe if Obama had lied to Americans about going to war instead of trying to get them better healthcare, his approval ratings would be higher.
Yet those shrinking approval numbers aren’t just due to the Republican “spin”. Sorry Republicans, you can’t take all the credit on this one. The same Democrats that bought into all of the “YES WE CAN!” hype are now cowering at every Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh attack. Democrats that were once full of HOPE are now wondering where all the cool Shepard Fairey art went. Liberals are left asking, “Why isn’t Obama performing any miracles?”
To the Democrats I have this to say: welcome back to reality. We were all swept up in the Obama hype, and now that our main man isn’t delivering in the way we were hoping, we have gone into a slump. But we should not and cannot give up now. We all expected him to bust into the White House and completely erase everything Bush did. But Obama has to do what every other President has had to do in order to push his agenda: get past Congress. They have checks they can use on him, and they will use them. If Democrats give up on Obama now, then we lose our chance to change the path America was heading down during Bush’s two terms.
The media likes to focus on the negative, and now that Obama is in office, they are going to focus on what he is doing wrong. But what Democrats need to remember is that many positives have come out of the Obama administration. We now have the first Latina on the Supreme Court, Guantanamo has been shut down, we are making our way out of Iraq, and unemployment is slowly going back down–all of these things in less than six months! Yes, Obama has not done some things that he said he would do, but he still has three and a half more years left in his term to prove himself.
Healthcare reform is looking like a disaster, and Obama has hinted that he is open to dropping the public option. Democrats are angry with Obama, because they feel he is ruining our chance of finally getting a public option of healthcare. People wonder why he isn’t being more forceful and unrelenting, and are considering his compromising stance as being weak. It may be frustrating that Obama is relenting, but I view his M.O. as a refreshing change from the last President. Bush’s administration was constantly feeding us lies for the past eight years: there are WMDs in Iraq, Sadam Hussein is a threat, and wiretapping and torture are legal. At least when Obama does something, he is honest and as promised, he listens to both sides of the argument. Democrats (including myself) will be disappointed if the public option is dropped from healthcare reform, but at least I can be proud knowing that the Obama administration tried its hardest to legally push their agenda, without cramming some anti-American propaganda down everyone’s throats if they didn’t support it.
In a political climate as divided as ours, it is normal for approval ratings to fluctuate. People thought Obama was magically going to fix the problems the Bush administration caused just by being elected. Obama made some promises, and we should hold him to them. But there is still more time left in his term for change. Democrats must unite behind him in order for important Democrat-supported bills, such as healthcare reform, to be passed. Our own worst enemy is our willingness to turn our back on our struggling leader. If Democrats can’t support Obama when he needs us the most, we may never get that change we so desperately need.