President Obama's Approval Rating Hits Highest Point of 2nd Term
Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of the president's job performance.
— -- A new poll measuring President Barack Obama's approval rating shows why Hillary Clinton's campaign views him as a major asset going into the final month of the election.
According to a CNN/ORC poll conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, 55 percent of Americans approve of the president's job performance, with 44 percent disapproving.
The poll shows Obama with the highest approval to date in his second term. The rating matches his best since he took office in 2009.
His high marks so late in his term could be attributable to a number of factors, including the overwhelming disapproval of the two candidates competing to be his successor. However, Clinton has the advantage of utilizing Obama on the campaign trail in the final stretch to Election Day, pitting him directly against Donald Trump's argument that electing Clinton would mean a continuation of Obama's policies.
Yesterday, in the spirit of the baseball playoff season, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama views himself as a sort of "cleanup hitter."
"He's got the biggest bat in the lineup," Earnest said. "And the president has had a couple of opportunities to step to the plate, but he'll have many more in the five weeks that remain until Election Day to make a case while the whole stadium is watching."
The president has recently become notably more fierce in appealing to the African-American community to see the upcoming election as either the continuation of his policies or the reversal of his legacy.
"I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election," Obama said late last month at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner. "You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote. And I'm going to be working as hard as I can these next seven weeks to make sure folks do."