Approval Ratings Down, Obama Still Tops Biden, Clinton, McCain

President Obama's popularity continues to tumble, but at least he'd still win today in a do-over of the 2008 presidential election, according to a new Washington Whispers poll.

But pity Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's well-traveled and loyal deputy. Put in our mix of five candidates to choose from in an election repeat, he garnered just 1 percent, the same poor result he saw in the 2008 Iowa caucuses that prompted him to quit his life-long goal of sitting in the Oval Office.

Worse for Biden, the subject of rumors that Obama will dump him for Hillary Clinton before the 2012 reelection campaign begins: The secretary of state is the choice of 21 percent in our biweekly Internet poll conducted by Synovate-eNation. She was third. The rumors around her becoming vice president are being pushed mostly by political pundits though few top Democrats see Obama dumping his veep. The last vice president to be thrown overboard was Nelson Rockefeller when former President Gerald Ford picked former Sen. Bob Dole as his No. 2 in 1976.

The results suggest that there isn't much sentiment to have Biden as president, says our poll analyst: "He's probably now seen much like [former Vice President Dick] Cheney was. At this point, he doesn't have the aspirations to be president after Obama. Whereas Al Gore was definitely seen as aiming for the top spot after Clinton, Cheney definitely wasn't and it seems that Biden isn't the next Democrat in line."

On the Republican front, Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, was second with 24 percent; Mitt Romney was fourth with 16 percent, a bad result for the potential 2012 candidate many GOP-ers see as the front-runner. Biden was last.

Lots of voters have buyer's remorse with President Obama. If there was a 2008 election do-over today, who would you pick as president?

Barack Obama 38%

John McCain 24%

Hillary Clinton 21%

Mitt Romney 16%

Joe Biden 1%

Source: The Synovate eNation Internet poll was conducted August 16-18 among 1,000 nationally representative households by global market research firm Synovate.

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