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By Greg Pierce

TREND GAINS SPEED

"The Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia this month are a clarion call for centrist, bipartisan leadership - and a punctuation mark on a slow but steady movement by middle-of-the-road voters away from President Obama," longtime Democratic consultant Douglas E. Schoen writes in the New York Daily News.

"The trend, under way since Obama took the oath, is now accelerating. Unless the president makes a course correction, he will live to regret it," Mr. Schoen said.

"Over the course of the last 10 months, independents have abandoned Obama and the Democrats en masse. They're not necessarily shifting to the Republican Party, but they are far less supportive of the president and the Democratic Party's priorities.

"Back in the spring, Obama was consistently registering 60 percent approval among independents. Today, a majority of independents - 53 percent according to a recent CNN poll - actually disapprove of the president's job performance. That erosion can only be called a cratering of support.

"The single biggest reason independents are breaking away from Democrats is that they feel he is spending too much money, increasing the deficit and not addressing the nation's problems in a bipartisan way.

"Put simply, they think Obama is abandoning the political center he claimed to represent as a candidate.

"And when it comes to the judgment of centrists, perception is reality."

THE 'RECKONING'

No polls have been released on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s decision "to hold the trials of key al-Qaeda suspects in New York City, but you can bet it won't be a popular decision in the area of the country hardest hit by 9/11," John Fund writes at www.opinionjournal.com.