Obama '08?

Good afternoon.
The Rasmussen Presidential approval poll came out this morning. It is potentially interesting, if you believe in polls.
28% Strongly Approve of Mr Obama's performance vs 40% who strongly disapprove. That yields an index of (28-40) -12. Friday the index was -17. That is quite a dramatic change.
Rasmussen uses a 3-day rolling average methodology. So there is still one day's worth of polling following the State of the Union speech that will show up in Sunday's Index.
The bounce is, according to Rasmussen, totally attributable to Dems. Repubs and Indies didn't move. The positive for Mr Obama is that Dems may be getting over the Mass Senate loss.

Overall, 49% approve of Mr Obama. 51% disapprove.

Advocate wrote:

Hey, bring it on! The nonsensical stuff from the doesn't faze me. After all, you guys are led by the nose by the likes of Palin, Hannity, and Limbaugh.

It is abundantly clear from his persistent, repeated defensive responses that Advocate is uterly unfazed and unaffected by all this!!!

With each response he stoops lower. And, in Advocate's case, it appears that there is no level to which he will not stoop.

Few are as good at delivering a high-stakes speech as President Obama, something he proved again in Wednesday's State of the Union. The speech, which focused on jobs and the economy, was feisty, confident and -- rare for presidential addresses -- funny. The insta-poll numbers were great. Joe Klein called it "Obama at his best." It was so good, in fact, that virtually nobody noticed that Obama had already lost the argument.

The tell came a few days before, when the White House proposed a -- deep breath here -- non-security discretionary spending freeze. The inelegantly titled policy halts spending growth in a category that accounts for 13 percent of the federal budget. From the perspective of long-term deficits, that spending -- much less its growth over three years -- is insignificant.

A spending freeze might be what Americans envision when they think about deficit reduction. The only problem is, it won't do much to reduce the deficit. As the Economist pointed out, "Mr. Obama has apparently concluded that the electorate can't be expected to handle anything like a real description of the tough decisions which must be made."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm
If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

The entire 'strong approve v. strong disapprove' matrix is specifically designed to make the guy in office look bad, because it ignores the fact that those who are against a politician are much more likely to be strongly against him, then those who support him are likely to be strongly for him.

I think that the Reps have been very successful in currying favor with people who are not well educated and who are relatively ignorant of current events, history, etc.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The entire 'strong approve v. strong disapprove' matrix is specifically designed to make the guy in office look bad, because it ignores the fact that those who are against a politician are much more likely to be strongly against him, then those who support him are likely to be strongly for him.

And where is your proof for this rather novel, and rather general, proposition ?

I think a more serious problem with all of these polls is that they're failing to ask a much more important question: Obama is trying to govern as a centrist.

My vote for most audacious spin is that which asserts that Scott Brown was elected in Mass because the voters wanted to send a message to Washington that they should stop dicking around and get Obamacare passed.

Somehow this actually got on the latest Democratic talking points memo.

Thomas wrote:

I think a more serious problem with all of these polls is that they're failing to ask a much more important question: Obama is trying to govern as a centrist.

Is Obama trying to govern as a centrist? Or, is Obama attempting to convince voters that his governing from the left is governing from the center?

I think that the Dems have been very successful in currying favor with people who are not well educated and who are relatively ignorant of current events, history, etc. Obama, Palosi, Reid, Soros, Ayres, Wright, Alinski, et al, have convinced them of the truth of such nonsense as Bush is responsible for Obama's problems, Republicans are obstructionist preventing the Democrats from solving America's problems, Bush cut taxes only for the rich, the greed of the wealthy is preventing economic growth in America, and redistribution of wealth by the feds from those who want it to those who need it is constitutional. Thus, they vote against things that are clearly in their best interests.