The latest evidence is a question in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Sunday that asks whether the phrase “can manage the government effectively” applies to Obama. Just more than four in ten (42 percent) said that it does while 57 percent said it does not. (It was the lowest that Obama scored on any of the six characteristic questions CNN asked in the survey.)

Obama’s trajectory on the question is all to the bad for Democrats. Back in December 2009, more than three quarters of respondents in a CNN/ORC poll said that Obama was an effective manager of the government. By early November 2009 that number had dropped to 58 percent. It dipped below 50 percent for the first time in June 2010 and in the three polls in which CNN has asked the question since mid-November 2013, 40 percent, 43 percent and now 42 percent, respectively, have said that he is a good manager.

Again, this matters because so much of the Obama brand was premised on the idea that whether or not you agreed with him on issues, you knew he was not going to be George W. Bush when it came to running the government day to day. Increasingly, that is not true in the minds of many Americans.