A new Gallup poll finds Americans are rapidly becoming more pessimistic about reaching a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, with public opinion swinging 15 points in less than a week.

Just 50% of Americans now think it’s likely a deal will be struck, while 48% think it’s unlikely.

The Washington Post reports President Obama will cut short his vacation and return from Hawaii on Wednesday in a last ditch effort to restart budget talks with House Republicans.

Wonk Wire: The grand bargain is dead.

Congressional leaders and the White House “are taking a holiday break in negotiations over how to avoid year-end spending cuts and tax increases, and may not take up the issue in earnest again until just before New Year’s Eve,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“There have been no talks between party leaders or between the White House and GOP officials since Friday, when President Barack Obama and Congress left town for Christmas, officials close to the negotiations say. That dims the prospect that any backup plan for averting the fiscal cliff could be devised and moved through the Senate when it reconvenes Thursday, as some expected.”

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist charged that President Obama has “not been negotiating” in fiscal cliff talks, Politico reports.

Said Norquist: “One of the challenges, of course, is people see this happening; they realize that the president has not been negotiating at all over the past three months. We learned days and weeks and months afterwards that they had non-meetings where this is going on.”

“Republicans used to be interested in not running continual rivers of red ink. If that meant raising taxes a little bit, we always raised taxes a little bit. But nowadays taxes are like leprosy and they can’t be used for anything, and so Republicans have denied themselves any bargaining power.”

— Former Rep. William Frenzel (R-MN), quoted by the New York Times.