Obama '08?

Not sure how all this Palin talk came up in a thread on Obama, but let me try to bring the two together.

According to the latest Gallup Polls Obama's Favorable Approval Ratings are 47 favorable, 46 unfavorable.

According to the latest CNN Polls, Palin is at 46/46 favorable/unfavorable.

So Obama and Palin are just about equal...how interesting....

Dowd wrote that "Palin's favorability numbers are a mirror image of those of Obama."
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss in the FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAILGet Slate RSS FeedsRSSShare This ArticleRECOMMEND...Single PageSINGLE PAGE
Yahoo! BuzzFacebook FacebookPost to MySpace!MySpaceMixx MixxDigg DiggReddit RedditDel.icio.us del.icio.usFurl FurlMa.gnolia.com Ma.gnoliaSphere SphereStumble UponStumbleUponCLOSE

The problem is, they're comparing apples to oranges. Both columns refer to polls that show Palin's favorability rating at around 43 percent"mere points away from Obama's job-approval rating of 49 percent. But as Media Matters has pointed out, favorability and job approval aren't the same thing. A politician's favorability rating is a general sense of the public's feeling about him. His job-approval rating is an evaluation of the work he's doing.

When you compare favorability ratings"apples to apples"Obama still leads Palin by a distance. The latest Gallup poll puts Obama's favorability 16 points ahead of Palin's, ABC puts his lead at 18 points, and CNN says it's 18 points higher. (Only Fox has the gap in single digits, with a seven-point spread.) It's impossible to compare their job-approval numbers because, well, Palin doesn't have a job.

HARDEST HIT BY OBAMACARE

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published in the New York Post on November 30, 2009.


The "health-care reform" bills in Congress would hit 39 states hard with new expenses, by raising Medicaid eligibility above the cur rent income cutoffs.

The only states that won't have to raise eligibility because of the Senate bill are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin (plus the District of Columbia). And the House bill would force even Massachusetts and Vermont to pay more.

Hardest hit would be Texas ($2,750 million a year in extra state spending under the Senate bill), Pennsylvania ($1,450 million), California ($1,428 million) and Florida ($909 million). Who knows if Florida could avoid imposing an income tax if it has to meet so high an unfunded mandate?

The required increases in state spending are likely to be quite high in some states whose senators are swing votes on ObamaCare:

* In Arkansas, home to swing Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, the annual increased state spending would come to $402 million (not counting the federal share) -- about a 10 percent increase in the state budget, which is now $4 billion a year.

* In Louisiana, whose Sen. Marie Landrieu sold her vote on a key procedural motion in return for more Medicaid funding, the increase would come to $432 million (a 5 percent hike in state spending) -- more than wiping out the extra funds she got in return for her vote.

* In Sen. Evan Bayh's Indiana, spending would go up by $586 million a year, a rise of 4 percent.

* In Sen. Ben Nelson's Nebraska, the added state spending would be $81 million a year, a 2 percent increase.

The Sebate ObamaCare bill would cost North Dakota, home of Sens. Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan, $14 million. South Dakota, represented by Sen. Tim Johnson, would have to boost Medicaid spending by $33 million.

The Medicaid-expansion provisions of the Senate bill are complex. In the first year of the program (2013), states must enroll anyone who earns less than 133 percent of the poverty level in their programs. For a family of four, the national average poverty level in 2009 is $22,000 a year. So any family that size that makes less than $29,000 would be eligible for Medicaid.

Many states, particularly in the South, actually have Medicaid cutoffs below the poverty level. Arkansas, for example, cuts off its Medicaid eligibility at only 17 percent of poverty level, and in Louisiana it goes up to only 26 percent. For these states, the spending increase required by the new bill is huge.

For the first three years of the program (2013-15) the federal government would pay for all of the costs of the Medicaid expansion. But, starting in the fourth year of operation -- 2016 -- the average state would be obliged to pay 10 percent of the extra cost.

For Democrat governors, this provision means sudden death. Particularly in states with limited Medicaid coverage, it would require huge tax increases.

Favorability ratings aren't the same thing as approval ratings, or a statement that you would vote for someone. Palin consistently polls very low as a potential candidate - most of you who like her in theory know that she would go down in flames...

Palin has lots of time to turn around her electability stats...