Obama and Dems poll numbers shoot up.... DISASTER LOOMS! AIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!

In the latest Newsweek poll, President Obama's job approval ratings have jumped, crossing the 50% mark. The poll shows his approval rating at 54%, with a 40% disapproval rate.

Further, although neither party in Congress gets favorable ratings, Democrats in Congress have a 10% approval advantage over the GOP - 41% to 31%.

How does this figure in the midterms? It's too early to say, but it seems that Democrats and progressives are starting to engage. Given the steam that the Tea Party has had, they've gained a significant media presence but it seems too early to translate that into wins, especially in districts where Tea Party candidates are going down to the wire with the crazy, and in many cases, upping the ante.

Dems in Disarray! Democratic Congressional numbers plunge upward

Krugman!

Dems in Disarray! Obama's numbers plunge upward

Obama Job Approval: Approve 52%(+1) / Disapp 41%(-1)

Highest in 10 weeks. These poll numbers are his Katrina. Why can't he close the deal?

The Hypocrisy of the Budget-Cutting Right; Christie on pace to be a one-termer

Governor Chris Christie was ushered into office amid the fanfare of wins in Virginia and Scott Brown's election to Ted Kennedy's seat and cries that America was rejecting the deficit spending of the Obama Administration.

He'll cut taxes, they said.

He'll eliminate waste, they cried.

He'll balance the budget, they promised.

It's easy. Just tell the damned poor to go get a job, crack down on the illegals and stop abortions and it'll all be swell.

As has been said before though, you can't have everything. If you want a balanced budget, hard cuts are going to have to be made. While it's a lovely narrative for rich white folks to demonize those not like them as lazy layabouts sucking down all of their hard-earned taxes, the reality is different.

As Christie found out.

NJ.com via Boehlert

Public opinion of Gov. Chris Christie has taken a dive in the aftermath of his first state budget, according to a poll released today.

The Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that Christie's favorability rating sank 12 points since February, when 45 percent of residents had a favorable opinion of the governor and 26 percent unfavorable. Now that stands at 33 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable, according to the poll.

The survey did not measure Christie's job approval ratings. Another poll, released by Fairleigh Dickinson University last week, found his job approval rating dropped 9 percentage points, to 43 percent, after he introduced his budget in March.

The governor's $29.3 billion budget proposal makes wide-ranging cuts -- including to property tax rebates and school, town and college aid -- while resisting broad-based tax increases. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll said that 43 percent of those who had heard about the budget are very or somewhat pleased with it, while 50 percent are somewhat or very displeased.
“Support for Christie is tied directly to the budget proposal,” said David Redlawsk, director of the poll. “Three weeks after the budget speech, the impact is starting to sink in. The result is a recognition that the proposed budget cuts are going to hurt and a significant decrease in favorable impressions of Christie.”

This is not as easy as celebutard Sarah Palin would have you believe. It's not just the poor and the illegals sucking down the resources.

I don't believe that Americans don't have the stomach for belt-tightening. But when they campaign on a platform of socking it to the layabouts to straighten things out, it comes as a bit of a shock to see your services cut.

Perhaps we ought to start telling the truth to the American people.

The GOP Myth of Obama's Falling Poll Numbers

via Eric Boehlert

The Gallup Daily Polling debunks the myth of Obama's falling poll numbers.

At the end of last August, in the middle of the Town Hall Tea Party hysteria, the President's numbers stood at 51/42.

Today?

51/42.

This is after he supposedly rammed health care down America's throat, turned us into a socialized country, squandered America's respect by bowing (several times), gave away our nuclear capability and made us less safe, and coddled the Underwear Bomber by Mirandizing him, increased taxes by passing a tax decrease, and tried to take away our guns (??). And that's just off the top of my head.

After all that, he's still in the same place.

The media want to play the "both sides do it" meme. If the Republicans are lying - making up stories out of thin air or whole cloth - then Democrats must be doing it too. The evidence isn't showing that, but the media is in such full-on CYA mode that they feel the need to create balance where none exists, or a counter-narrative where no valid one is available.

They've done it for the last decade - from Valerie Plame to WMD to death panels. Now they're doing it with a false narrative of falling electoral confidence.

As the almost always disagreeable Mark Halperin points out:

It is too early to assess the ultimate measure of victory: whether the President's actions have been prudent and beneficial, domestically and internationally. But by Election Day 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government. Not bad for a guy whose opponents (in both parties) for the White House suggested that he was too green in national life to know how to do the job — and whose presidency began in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis that demanded urgent attention and commanded much of his focus.

Cesca

The Republican Party doesn't get that President Obama, while being iconic, is also supremely qualified to be president -- perhaps not in terms of having a lengthy political resume, but chiefly in terms of having the temperament, education and intelligence for the job to a degree rarely seen in the presidency.

Public Trust in Government: 1958-2010

You really should check out the interactive Pew Poll, but here's a snapshot. I don't think commentary is necessary.

More on the new poll numbers Fox can suck on

Earlier, I posted a link to some new poll numbers that Fox, after lying about HCR numbers for months, can suck on. Here's another take from Krugman

Compare and contrast:

WSJ editorial, March 19:

This is what happens when a willful President and his party try to govern America from the ideological left, imposing a reckless expansion of the entitlement state that most Americans, and even dozens of Democrats in Congress, clearly despise.

Gallup, March 22:


Actually, it’s not clear whether public opinion has changed all that much: a substantial fraction of those who disapproved of the reform did so because it didn’t go far enough. Anyway, true to form, one of the key talking points of reform’s opponents — that passing reform was an outrage because it denied the clear will of the people — turns out to be completely bogus.

Remember, the more accurate post-passage numbers won't be out until Thursday-ish. But these are the first numbers I've seen in a while that actually differentiate between those that were unsatisfied because they feared IRS agents putting down gran'ma and those who were unsatisfied because the legislation didn't go far enough.

Huzzah! Excelsior!

Suck on these poll numbers Fox

Fox, who has been lying for MONTHS about poll numbers "showing" 76% of Americans oppose health care has yet to comment on this:

USA Today

Americans by 9 percentage points have a favorable view of the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against it.
By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was "a good thing" rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms, as "enthusiastic" or "pleased," while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as "disappointed" or "angry."

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill "a good first step" that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation's health care system.

Suck it, Fox.

The health care polls are flawed, facts are bring twisted, you're being lied to and the media is letting it happen

Joel Benenson, president and co-founder of Benenson Strategy Group, and lead pollster to President Obama wrote this piece for the Washington Post.

No pollster, including me, could look at the recent data and responsibly say anything other than that the American public is closely divided when it comes to supporting or opposing various health-care plans. The most recent Washington Post poll (from Feb. 10) shows a narrow gap between support and opposition: 46 percent favor; 49 percent oppose. This data is consistent with eight of the 12 most recent independent public polls reported on Pollster.com.

In light of this data, it is irresponsible, and wrong... to assert that a "solid majority of Americans oppose" health-care reform.

In fact, two recent polls, including one with the most negative ratings on health care, reveal through follow-up questions that a significant number of people who oppose current plans do so because they don't go far enough rather than because they go too far. Not only is it absurd to suggest that these people would rise up against Democrats for passing the president's plan, it is far more likely that they would join others who support the plan and punish those who tried to block reform or voted against it.

Let's take the CNN poll from early January -- the most negative independent poll on health care and one that predated President Obama's proposal. Only 40 percent supported the bills passed by Congress, while 57 percent opposed them. But in a crucial follow-up question, a net of 10 percent of all Americans opposed the bill because it was "not liberal enough." If one makes the reasonable assumption that these people are far more likely to side with supporters of the president's plan than with Republicans who are obstructing it, the results would show that 50 percent favor the plan or want a broader one, while only 45 percent oppose the plan.

...
The central components of the plan -- a ban on denying coverage of preexisting conditions, closing the Medicare "doughnut hole" on the drug coverage gap for seniors, creating an insurance exchange in which small business and those without coverage could buy private insurance at competitive rates -- are all supported by solid majorities, from 60 percent to 81 percent.

There's no question that a majority of Americans oppose a government-run health system. But there is no government-run health care in the plan, and not a single American would be forced into any government-run program.

In politics, new information is always the most potent. When it comes to health care and insurance, once reform passes, the tangible benefits Americans will realize will trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today.

And when that reality kicks in, the political burden will shift from those who supported the plan to those who voted against banning insurance companies from denying coverage to those who are sick, against the tax credits for small businesses offering coverage, or against helping seniors on Medicare pay less for prescription drugs.

It is no accident that Republican leaders are warning Democrats of dire political consequences if health reform passes.

But there is every reason to believe that for Republicans, the negative consequences will be their own.

What you've been told is not accurate: mid-term election edition

Excellent DailyKos article from pollster Charlie Cook about how the poll numbers have been skewed to make it seem like a GOP landslide is imminent. Why would the GOP want to fudge pre-electoral numbers? Simple, Americans like winners and want to back a winner. Give them the impression that Obama is dead in the water, and a fair number of sheeple will say "yeah!" and follow.

The more pertinent question is "why is the media blindly reporting polls instead of doing their own journalism?".

Our media sucks.

The stimulus is working; why the poll numbers are down

via BCGAB

Suck it, Republicans:

Between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were created or saved through September as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

The data, released Monday, say the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic product was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been had the $787 billion stimulus package not passed in February. Also, the stimulus lowered the unemployment by between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points, according to the report.

Yeah, 10.2 percent unemployment is awful and the Democrats need to pass another jobs bill right away or else. But this proves that spending equals growth equals jobs equals recovery. It's the ridiculousness of the corporate press and the Republicans that put this very basic economic notion into doubt, but don't hold your breath waiting for a retraction of all the red-baiting and concern-trolling we endured last February/March.

As Matt Yglesias points out, it shouldn't be surprising that Obama's poll numbers aren't that great. In fact, there's historical evidence for this.

One frustrating aspect of “horse race” coverage of the U.S. political system is that the people who insist on covering important policy debates as a kind of game are also pretty bad at analyzing the game.

Nor should it surprise anyone that 11 months of deteriorating economic conditions have taken a toll on Obama’s popularity.

Look at Ronald Reagan’s approval rating:


At the time there were probably lots of clever stories written about why Reagan was doing better or worse on whichever day. But looking back at things from 20 years later, the moral of the story seems to be pretty simple “recessions and giant scandals make presidents unpopular.” And of course they do!

So the next time you hear Doucheborough talking about how the numbers show Obama is tanking, remember he's looking at snapshots and trying to get you to tune in tomorrow for the political equivalent of "How'd the Celtics do last night?"

I'll also remind you of this post from last week, showing that the only place Obama is down is among Republicans. It used to be that a lot of them hated him. Now even more do.

Statistics made to lie; Obama's doing fine

(BCGAB)

Listening to cable news and Republican talkers, you'd think President Obama was nose diving in the polls. Not true, according to PPP:

On our national survey in June Obama had an 82% approval rating with Democrats. Now it's 83%. He had a 46% approval rating with independents. Now it's 47%. No real change on either of those fronts. But with Republicans he's dropped from an 18% mark to just 10%. That shift is what put his approval rating below 50% -- he's gone from a small amount of crossover support to a very small amount of crossover supports.

Independents and Democrats still support the president. Republicans, trapping in their death spiral, are fading fast.

And really, is this guy going to beat anyone?