This is by far one of the ugliest polls I’ve seen for President Obama in a very long time. The American people overwhelmingly think Obama has failed to make real progress on fixing the economy. From CBS News: Sixty-nine percent say the president has not made real progress on the economy, which voters overwhelmingly cite [...]

Reducing our spending on overseas military commitments is the deficit reduction idea that has the broadest public support across all partisan groups, according to new Pew Research Center poll. Solid majorities of regular Democrats, Republicans and independents all want to see America stop wasting so much money on foreign military commitments.

The graph really speaks for itself. This is very bad news for the Obama campaign. People’s increasingly negative perception about the economy have destroyed Obama’s economic job approval numbers, which has dragged down his overall job approval numbers. It is hard to imagine how any President can win re-election when the economy is ranked as the top issue by voters and 71 percent of Americans disapprove of the President’s handling of the economy.

A “plan” entails laying out specifically what policies you all agree to change. Saying you told someone else to work out basically every important detail at a later time isn’t a plan. It’s grandstanding. It is just another form of the magic asterisk trick we have used in the past so politicians can pretend they have reached an agreement on really big numbers without actually doing anything.

Who’s the party of Reagan now?

Okay, that’s not true. Peter Peterson has not promised to give up anything, but he will stand to gain tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in additional pocket change over the next decade thanks to the Senate Gang of Six’s new tax breaks.

What’s important to note is that AARP says it opposes cuts to Social Security as part of discussions on how to reduce the deficit. Notice they don’t say anything about opposing cuts to Social Security anywhere else — only where it pertains to deficit reduction. That’s a pretty weak defense, if you ask me.

Way back in January 2008, a certain presidential candidate gave a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church on the “essential deficit that exists in this country.” It’s a good speech. On Wednesday, President Obama is slated to give a speech on deficit reduction. I hope he check out what that other guy had to say a couple of years ago before he steps in front of the cameras.

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that, despite the oft-repeated conservative mantra, we are not a center-right nation.

When fully in control of Washington, the Republican Party has traditionally shown no concern for budget deficits. They had no problem passing both unpaid-for tax cuts or huge entitlement expansion on nearly party line votes. As Republican Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, “Deficits don’t matter” –at least as long as Republicans are in the White House.