U.S. President Barack Obama is mounting a last-minute push to rally his Democratic political base, only days before Americans head to the polls for midterm elections next Tuesday.
With a rejuvenated Republican party expected to take Congress and make major gains in the Senate in the mid-term elections, Obama has been zig-zagging across the U.S. amid a backlash against his government's performance over the past two years.
In fact, a recent Gallup poll suggests that 55 per cent of voters are either supporting the Republican Party or learning Republican, while the Democrats are polling at around 40 per cent.
Fortunes for the Democrats are so bad that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid is in danger of being usurped in Nevada by Sharron Angle, a Tea Party candidate who has accused Reid of supporting free Viagra handouts for child molesters.
The Democrats grabbed control of the Senate and Congress in 2006, when voter resentment against then-president George W. Bush was peaking. Four years later, however, the political landscape has changed considerably.
Not only are the Republicans nailing the Democrats on big-spending programs like the $787-billion stimulus and Obama's health care bill, but the moribund U.S. economy is giving the GOP even more ammunition.
Indeed, with sluggish GDP figures and a stubborn unemployment rate which is frozen at 9.6 per cent, many American voters feel like things won't improve without a change.
Conversely, some of the most liberal Democrats feel that Obama hasn't been progressive enough while in office.
Equally troubling for Obama is that the coalition of women, young people and independents may be drifting away from the political tent he put together during the 2008 presidential election.
"If the economy was better, President Obama and his Democratic party would be better off. Since its not, Republicans have a chance to have a resurgence, and it looks like they will," said New York Times political analyst Jeff Zeleny.
On Wednesday night, the president appeared on Comedy Central's "Daily Show," where host Jon Stewart asked him whether he set the bar too high during his presidential campaign.
"Is the difficulty that you have here the distance between what you ran on and what you delivered?" Stewart asked.
"You ran with such, if I may, audacity. Yet legislatively it has felt timid at times," Stewart said, referring to the compromises which Obama was forced to make in order to pass his health bill reform.
In response, Obama said that he loved Stewart's show, but in this case, the liberal television host and commentator was simply wrong.
"What happens is it gets discounted because the assumption is, 'we didn't get 100% of what we wanted, we only got 90% of what we wanted -- so let's focus on the 10% we didn't get,'" the president said.
"This is, what I think most people would say, is as significant a piece of legislation as we have seen in this country's history."
For many left-leaning Americans, Stewart's show is a much-needed antidote to conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. An appearance on the show is also a way to reach younger voters who may not watch traditional news shows.
Though Obama has made several appearances on the campaign trail this month, some strategists have said that he has not been aggressive enough on the stump during events.
Still, there is chatter that if the Republicans make major gains and take Congress, it could actually benefit Obama during the 2012 presidential election.
In 1994, Bill Clinton's Democrats sat in a similar situation when the Republicans stormed the midterm election. However, in the next presidential election, Clinton won and his approval rating soared once he had something to rally against.
Similarly, Obama has long-slammed the Republicans as being negative. However, if the GOP sweeps through the election and legislative gridlock takes hold in Washington, Obama will have a very valuable campaign tool in 2012.
With a report from CTV's Joy Malbon
