Obama Approval Rating Drops to Fifty Percent

A recent poll by Quinnipiac University shows that Americans are growing increasingly concerned about job losses and the growing budget deficit - two of the primary factors that have brought Barack Obama's approval rating down to a mere 50%. 42% of the poll respondents disapprove of Obama's performance at this point. Those numbers are in sharp contrast to a similar poll taken in late June, when 57 percent of respondents approved and only 33 percent disapproved of the job Obama was doing.

But since that last poll, some developments have occurred that hurt his image with the public. The first is the continued economic slide in areas like jobs and the projected budget deficit. There has been some relatively good news on the housing and manufacturing fronts recently, but it doesn't appear to enough to offset the prevailing fear that most Americans hold.

Also, the "stupidly" incident in Cambridge is likely to have soured some people on the President - although he was quick to try to right the ship on that one, having the police officer and the professor to the White House for a drink. But for many, the damage was done when the President entered a conversation about which he did not have many of the facts.

As the health care debate continues to heat up and the economy continues to drag, it is likely that Obama is going to face more challenging poll numbers in the immediate future. And all of this with U.S. struggles in Afghanistan and a very shaky withdrawal from Iraq in its earliest stages. Things could get much better - or much, much worse - for the new president by the end of the year.