Obama's popularity hits near-record high on eve of election

On his last day of barnstorming to preserve his legacy, President Barack Obama is approaching peak popularity.

Obama’s approval rating hit 56 percent in Gallup’s tracking poll on Monday, a reminder of his power as a surrogate as he travels to Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania to drum up the vote for Hillary Clinton. It’s rare for a two-term president to be in such high demand on the trail, and that level of popularity has been rare in Obama’s tenure. It’s the highest his rating in that poll has been since October 2012, shortly before he was re-elected, when he hit 57 percent. Other polls over the past month have shown similarly high ratings — all vastly better than those for either Clinton or Donald Trump.

“Whatever credibility I've earned after eight years as president, I am asking you to trust me on this one,” Obama said on Monday in his appeal for Clinton at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It’s a pitch his numbers show he can safely make.

En route to Michigan, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that Obama’s “aggressive schedule” on the day before the election is a bid to fight complacency among his own hardcore supporters.

"He's urging people not to give into the temptation to not be as focused on this election just because he's not on the ballot,” Earnest said. “As you've heard him say many times, his agenda, his legacy is on the ballot.”

If Obama were on the ballot, he’d fare much better against Trump, according to a Bloomberg poll out Monday that showed him beating the Republican real estate mogul by 12 percentage points. That’s a big jump over the 4-point edge that Clinton is gripping to in national polls on the eve of the election.

Then again, since Obama hasn’t been on the ballot, there hasn’t been the same focus on his persistent weak spots, like the carnage in Syria and spiking Obamacare premiums. While those matters have been issues, Trump and Clinton have mostly spent the waning days trading barbs over her emails and his misogyny.

That’s given Obama the space to take a broader, loftier view of the election.

"The greatest country in the world decides who its leader will be based on the preferences of the people,” Earnest said, “and that's a rather profound thing, when you consider how we've been sort of focused on polling numbers and charges and counter charges and counter charges between the campaigns."

Obama asked the cheering, youthful crowd of 9,000 to indulge him as he began his remarks on Monday.

“I’m a little sentimental,” Obama said. “This is gonna be my last — probably my last day of campaigning, for awhile.”

Joining him for that last day are longtime senior aides who don’t usually go on such trips, including Brian Deese (who went from helping with the auto bailout, which is key to Obama’s “credibility” in Michigan, to shepherding the president’s climate agenda) and national security adviser Susan Rice. Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and political director David Simas were also along for the ride.

Earnest said that Obama is “100 percent focused” on the election. But after it’s over, he’ll have the chance to try to drive his approvals up even higher.

“There’ll be time for him to think and talk a little bit more about his own presidency and his own perspective on the last eight years in two months that remain in his own presidency,” Earnest said. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.”