Via the Free Beacon, a frivolous but fun historical misfire that illustrates how silly Team Obama's idolatrous "unprecedented!" meme can get. In an attempt to demonstrate how popular and awesome his boss is, White House spokesman Josh Earnest asserted that Obama is the only president to win consecutive popular vote majorities since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. This is wrong. Ronald Reagan replicated that feat in 1980 and 1984. When a reporter corrected Earnest on this point, Earnest smugly doubled down:
Back in reality, Reagan carried nearly 52 percent of the popular vote in 1980, beating Jimmy Carter by more than nine percentage points en route to a dominant 489 electoral vote haul. Four years later, Reagan destroyed Walter Mondale by roughly 18 points, winning every state except Minnesota; 525 electoral votes. Three additional presidents since Ike have scored back-to-back electoral college wins: Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Each man failed to hit the 50-percent-plus-one mark at least once. Clinton never won a popular vote majority. Many Democrats are pointing to Obama's relatively high approval ratings as an affirmation of his Oval Office tenure. Critics have attributed that uptick to a 2016 election cycle in which most voters are deeply dissatisfied with their choices, and in which the lame duck president has mostly faded into the background. What Obama fans don't mention is that his ratings were significantly worse throughout most of his presidency, that the country's right track/wrong track numbers are extremely poor, and that popular backlashes against his unpopular agenda resulted in an historic decimation of Democrats at the state and local level in consecutive midterm elections.