Obama Has Gas Pains

You can hide a lot of bad economic news in government statistics and actually make things look better than they are, but you can't hide high gas prices and people are waking up to the fact that Obama's energy policies are adding to their pain at the pump:

Soaring gasoline prices are biting into household incomes and nibbling at Americans’ fuel consumption — and support for President Obama, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

About six in 10 respondents said they had cut back on driving because of rising fuel prices, and seven in 10 said that high pump prices are causing financial hardship.

Obama, like previous presidents in times of high oil prices, is taking a hit. Only 39 percent of those who call gas prices a “serious financial hardship” approve of the way he is doing his job, and 33 percent of them say he’s doing a good job on the economy.

The Energy Information Administration said Monday that gas prices climbed last week to $3.88 a gallon, up 81 cents since the start of the year. That is the highest pump price since August 2008, before the financial meltdown.

Evidence of motorists’ hardships is littering the roads. AAA says the number of motorists running out of gas has been surging. John Townsend, a spokesman for the automobile association, said that cash-strapped members “are pushing the envelope” and that emergency gas deliveries to stranded members jumped nationwide, including by 40 percent in the District.

That sort of hardship could slow Obama’s reelection campaign. The Post-ABC poll shows that 60 percent of independents who say they’ve been hit hard by surging gas prices also say they definitely won’t support Obama in his bid for reelection.

In a hypothetical matchup with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the top GOP performer in the Post-ABC poll, Romney wins by 24 points among the independents who have taken a severe financial hit because of gas prices, and the president is up 7 percentage points among other independents.

Although there are limited tools at Obama's disposal to moderate gas prices, much of what happens in the energy markets are driven by emotion and perceptions as much as they are supply and demand. With a president who has previous expressed a desire for high fuel prices and whose energy policies are doing nothing to increase supply, there's no reason for prices to decline. If Obama were to seriously push for new drilling in American territory, even though that drilling wouldn't yield actual results for possibly years, the psychological effect would be immediate and you'd almost instantly see an easing in the energy markets.

My call for gas pump activism was picked up by several big websites and I think reminding people of Obama's role in these prices is important.  Nothing will change if we don't change presidents in 2012.