Why Does this President of the United States Remain Popular?

If the Republicans had even a slightly better candidate than Mitt Romney for President in 2012, I believe they would have won the election.  I say this because of the after-election reports that conservatives did not show up.  Less people voted than 2008, so a big Republican turn-out could have swung the election the other direction.  It still would have been close, but Republicans could have won.  Two big reasons conservatives stayed home in substantial numbers were, first, Romney's lack of conservatism -- conservatives didn't want another McCain-like candidate -- and, second, Mormonism -- many evangelicals wouldn't pull the lever for a Mormon.

On the other hand, the election shouldn't have been close because of how bad the economy was.  Early in his first term, President Obama himself said that if the unemployment numbers weren't lower, the voters should vote him out.  He didn't deserve to be reelected.  The economy started poorly under Obama, got worse, and didn't improve.   Here we are another half year in and the unemployment numbers just went up again last month.  I think most people know that the percentage of total employment is the lowest in decades, because people had even stopped looking for jobs.

Now we have multiple scandals unlike anything like I've seen in my lifetime.  We've had scandals before, but not so many going at one time.  You can correct me if you think I'm wrong, but it seems we now have four (or five) of them at one time:  Benghazi, IRS, AP Reporters/James Rosin, and now the NSA snooping.  These scandals are really bad and they should be enough to sink this Presidency -- maybe they will -- but the President still maintains around a 45-47% approval rating.  There doesn't seem to be any good reason for him to retain such an approval.  What are people approving of?

This is all just my opinion, but in my opinion there are two positive reasons President Obama stays popular:  his even temperament (or what some would call his "cool") and then his family.  The President looks like he has a solid family.   It looks very normal in comparison especially to other White House families.  He's married to the same woman and has two daughters that seem normal.  He looks unflappable and his family looks normal.  Those two help keep him popular.  We see family scandals among politicians and Obama doesn't have those.  I don't think those two should be enough, but they do contribute to keeping the approval rating as high as it is.

The 45-47% approval rating should hearken back to the campaign with the Romney slip about the 47%.  As much as people mocked Romney about that faux pas, he has looked very prophetic with it.  I think people know that what he said was actually correct.  I'm not saying that Obama couldn't move below that 45-47%.   He could have an exodus, especially if people start giving up on his economic philosophy because of their own personal pain.  They could "see the light" so-to-speak, if there is a massive standard of living drop in the country.

However, again, it's still at 45-47 in pretty bad conditions.  What keeps it there?  The media is still a major factor.   You know that if George W. Bush had these scandals, he would get far worse treatment, to put it lightly.  The media has been more negative, but they're still defensive of the President with the exception of Fox News.  But the 45-47 don't watch Fox News.  They don't listen to conservative talk shows on the radio.  The media is still an advocate of the Obama administration in a blatantly hypocritical way.  We still haven't heard Benghazi truth.  We still don't know how high up the IRS situation had gone.  There is still no resolution to the James Rosin issue.  A good example of the media capitulation is the relative silence on Gosnell, the abortion doctor in Philadelphia, killing babies after they were born.  The media left that one alone.  Gosnell was simply taking the same position that Obama defended while he was a state senator in Illinois.  The media essentially supports killing babies after botched abortions.  It's morally consistent for them as a whole.  And even if they don't like it, they are so pro-abortion that they can't make abortion look bad.  The media doesn't show the curiosity and doesn't do the digging on Obama.  There is a lot fishy about his birth, his parents, his associations, and his college records, but they were unwilling to get to the bottom of it.

Comedians, a part of the media, have a big impact in this culture.  They shouldn't, but they do.  When people think someone is a national joke, that person becomes sort of radioactive as a politician.  You can see this having happened to Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush.  It's also one reason why Joe Biden won't be president.  Those people were mocked so regularly that it became uncool to like them any more.  The comedians don't joke about Obama.  I don't have cable or an antennae, but I read the comedy in transcripts, and now only and finally do we get some jokes from Jay Leno.  Still the other comedians leave Obama alone.  They either don't want to hurt him, because they support him, or they are too afraid to joke about him, because of the charge of racism.

So, the media still supports Obama.  I'm going to wrap all the other reasons into one other reason, the second, which is the coalition of special interests.  Here they are, not necessarily in any order:  women, homosexuals, blacks, unions, the NEA, other teacher's unions, students at the liberal colleges, government dependents, environmentalists, animal rights activists, hispanic illegal immigration supporters, the Jewish vote, and atheists and agnostics.   There are probably more.   A lot of these groups live in urban areas, which explains the blueness of metropolitan locations.  Some don't fit into any of these groups, but they are in affinity with those who are in them, and the media supports these groups, which influences others who are not in them.  The Democrats have cobbled together a core Democrat voting bloc based on self-interest that guarantees Obama a base amount of approval, as long as he does not transgress the basic party line, which he essentially does not.  There are some contradictions between some of these groups.  A lot of blacks oppose homosexuality, for instance, so they'll vote for Obama but not for homosexual marriage.  Windmills, a pet of the environmentalists, kill birds in great numbers, which offends the animal rights activists, but they're both still in the pocket of Obama.

More than any other of the above list, the most influential, I believe, is women.  Women keep Obama afloat more than any one group.  Women are more liberal than ever, they have the majority of votes in this country, and they're not that happy with men.  A recent study says that 40% of the breadwinners in families are now women.  You probably know that the Republicans win the male vote and the Democrats win the female vote.  It is the women who win the Democrats their elections. Women are essentially in charge in this country.

What I've described above also gauges the spiritual condition of the country.  In many cases, churches are not countering the downward trend, but contextualizing their message and approach to fit into it.  Things won't change because many churches aren't addressing the problem.  They are capitulating to it.