why team obama isn't panicking yet

From Matt Bai's report on Obama's relationship with his party:

Even given the strong possibility that Democrats could lose control of at least one chamber of Congress this fall, Obama’s aides seem confident about his re-election, in part because they are drawing some inspiration from another midterm election year that isn’t quite yet ancient history — not 1994, but 1982.According to Gallup, Ronald Reagan’s average approval rating during the fifth quarter of his first term — the period between January and April 1982 — was 46.3 percent, just south of Obama’s average mark of 48.8 percent over the same period in 2010.

Comments

[ejoch]

There's a better reason for confidence- the present absence of a convincing GOP candidate. (and continued absence, if they keep playing let's-rerun-1964)