The turning point on Obama's popularity

Do Tuesday???s Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia reflect rising voter disaffection toward President Obama? Experts will debate that endlessly over the coming days. Over at tnr.com, John Judis answers a tentative ???yes,??? at least with respect to Virginia. His evidence: ???If you look at the graphs that pollster.com puts up that average out the polling findings, you find that towards the end of July, or in early August, the margin between Deeds and McDonnell jumped, and remained high for the rest of the election. At the very same time, Obama???s approval numbers in Virginia plummeted, and except for some outlier polls, have remained below fifty percent.??? That got me thinking: what happened in late July to hurt Obama???s approval rating -- not just in Virginia, but nationally? Well, lots, of course. The health-care debate was heating up. Unemployment had reached well above 9 percent. And then there was Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates??? racially-tinged clash with a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer. Obama treated the tiff as a teachable moment for the whole nation, rather than the local misunderstanding it probably was. On national television, he opined that the cops acted ???stupidly??? in arresting Gates at his home. Agree with it or not, this comment played very badly, and the president spent a week repairing the damage instead of staying on his health care message. ???Barack Obama???s approval ratings have suffered major declines. The president???s overall job approval number fell from 61% in mid-June to 54% currently,??? the Pew Research Center for the People the Press reported on July 30. ???Obama???s comments on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. appear to have played some role in his ratings decline,??? Pew noted. Almost 80 percent of the public had heard about the president???s comments, and those with an opinion disapproved, by a 41 to 29 percent margin. Whites were down on Obama???s handling of the flap by about two-to-one. As the first black president in American history, Obama has struck a careful balance, substantively and politically, on issues related to race. Siding with Gates and criticizing the police, in a case about which he admitted incomplete knowledge, was the president???s first and, as far as I can tell, only misstep. The polls say he paid for it; maybe he still is.