UPDATED: Uh-oh, another bump in Obama's approval rating; that's not a story the Beltway press wants to tell
December 22, 2009 10:34 am ET by Eric Boehlert
You know the drill. Inside the Beltway, only polling trends that show Obama's popularity declining are considered newsy and important and worthy of trend stories. Polls that show Obama gaining support? Not so much.
In other words, good news is no news.
And that's why you haven't heard much about the latest CNN poll that has Obama's approval rating spiking six points in just the last two weeks. Heck, even CNN didn't think that was the news hook for the polling data, which is why in its online write-up, CNN didn't mention Obama's approval bump until two-thirds through the article.
Question: If CNN's poll, on the eve of controversial health care reform passing, showed that Obama's approval rating had dropped six points since early December, do you think that would qualify as 'news'?
Yeah, me too.
Keeping my fingers crossed that they can find a compromise that enough people can vote for.
Being a Democratic leader is like herding cats. And I don't think another President has faced the same polling problem that Obama faces. Even when Bush was making it clear that he was a really incompetent leader, he still had the support of the core Republicans. But Obama has (hopefully, just temporarily) lost some of his core support when pollsters call Americans. He's not only lost some of his independent voters, and some moderate Republicans who were those fed up with Bush, but he's oozing support from far left Dems too. The very partisan Dems and Republicans don't typically 'leave' the fold.
Call me stubborn, but I have no intention of giving seats in Congress to teabaggers, conservatives, or republicans voluntarily, as I believe they should have to fight like he!! for every seat they gain.
the fight to bring us back will not be won in a year..or by a single piece of legislature..i will take strong.. steady leadership..both from president Obama and the congress...if democrats make the mistake of 1980..we only have ourselves to blame..
Today, Rasmussen claims Obama has a 56% disapproval rating!!
The latest Rasmussen poll is the ONLY major poll showing Obama currently with a net negative approval. Of course, that lands it the top headline spot on the Drudge Report while Drudge does not mention all of the positive polls. Even Gallup has Obama with a net +5% bounce today (which is based on the average of the last 3 days, so it only includes one day of polling after the Senate health care vote).
It's ridiculous.
This is not a poll for a campaign. This is meant to gauge the country's feelings about the president.
There's a reason why you'll find links to Rasmussen from Drudge ... It is Drudge-bait.
I had challenged them on the fact that they stopped doing it, and what seemed clear to me, that his numbers were tanking, were said to not be the reason for them not having that data readily available.
But don't you know, after the inauguration, magically those final polling results were published by them - they had been gathering them all along, and simply had stopped publishing their daily tracking poll for Bush. So, they lied when they told me that there was no reason for them to have been collecting that info.
That disappearing of Bush's approval numbers was the same time that they started with their bogus "Presidential Approval Index", which subtracted the strong negatives from the strong positives, ignoring the "fair" and "good" responses. They couldn't give Obama a high number, so they created this bogus measurement. If you look at Bush's "Index" number, he was like a -30.
Daily tracking of opinion polls mean even less.
Pre-existing conditions is a big one... but I fear that the private (very little) insurance will simply find every possible way to NOT pay for badly needed treatment except for those too poor to pay (meaning the gov't pays) and doing all they can to make a profit on the pain, suffering, and likely death of people!
I'm not a fan of this bill, to be sure... but it is not too late to still put in he lowering of Medicare age to 55 or even 50 or even open in up to everyone as another potential insurance option? (which would be the best option!)
As for Obama's poll numbers going up or down...
If Obama wants them to hover around 75% or more and guarantee re-election in 2012... all he has to do is govern like the Socialist, Communist, Marxist, leftist, pinko liberal that the crazy out-of-control sleazy right-wing is accusing him of being now!
But, it's better than nothing.
I paid into insurance pools for years and took very little out.
Now I have developed a chronic condition that tends to be very expensive. Does that mean that I will have to pay extra, now that I am actually using the insurance?
But I still think we need insurance reform and some health CARE reform (two different things). The insurance reform we need is to take the obscene profits out of it. If insurance companies use 90% of the premiums they collect to pay for medical treatment, things would be vastly better.
We also need some more complicated reforms in our health care delivery system, but those are problems for another day.
As is, it's a terrible bill and it is a terrible shame because it wasted a once in a lifetime opportunity to get it right.
Obama may never have the approval ratings that Bush had immediately after 9/11. It was a time when Americans were feeling very united, and wanted to support their country, and their president. Reaching those kind of numbers relies on having reasonable people on the other side of the political aisle, something the Dems just don't have lately.
Ok. CNN Poll numbers were going up leading to the vote. It could be positive for the Health Care bill. But I just checked both Rasmussen (the most accurate predictor of Obamas win last November) and Gallup (not exactly a right-wing mouthpiece) and both are showing a *drop* after the vote went through. Could it be that your spin was wrong? Could it be that majority of Americans which want ObamaCare Dead were hopeful that by staying out of the Picture, Obama might help this monstrosity to die? Really, your depiction that this was not covered was bull. I saw at least three other news feeds that were gushing over this same trend and saying "Glory, Glory, Glory -- Here Comes the Messiah Riding in on a Donkey!!!" Of Course they were Left wing mouthpieces like the New York Times, etc, with just as much distortion as CNN has. The CNN poll doesn't carry the credibility that Rasmussen earned by being *accurate* mk3782. So if their "secret sauce" is what keeps it accurate, I'll take that instead of your brand of Koolaide...
Just remember history. They nailed that previous "Messiah" to a cross soon afterwards. The public is fickle. And Obama may or may not be doomed. But this little bump is really not that important. The long trend is what he (and any Democrat hoping for a ride on his coat-tails in 2010 elections) should be worrying about...
;'{P~~~
Of course, he's going to try to sell this bill like it's a huge success and pretend all his campaign promises are in it. But it's pretty evident he sold out.
As soon as he got power, he became completely submissive to the insurance companies... he gave up everything we fought for and sold out 30 million people to an unfair mandate that has little cost control (a mandate he is on the record as being against!!!) He's putting 30 million plus people into the hands of the corrupt insurance industry that will always game the system.
The Truth: His real fear is not getting their contributions for 2012. I for one won't be voting for him, I've lost faith and his words ring hollow now. They were always hollow, but I just wanted to believe. I'm very sorry I did.