this country, i swear.

Still a better prez than the last guy.

I'm sooo worried about this. NOT. Reagan's poll numbers were in the low 40s for two years before he won 49 of 50 states.

When healthcare passes (and it will) and the economy rebounds (and it will) Obama's numbers will move back up.

But even if his numbers are up next summer, the midterms will make Congress too scared to try anything big. Clinton was still pushing the healthcare plan in September, 1994 helped give the republicans control.

The economic numbers make some sort of sense; he was never gonna get any two-year grace period. But for God's sake ... do the jackasses in this country LIKE what the GOP does to them in concert with the insurance companies? And 'too much spending'? In other words, a majority believes the bullshit that the deficit = the economy, an equation that ALWAYS favors the rich and the corporations.

Without the details of who did the poll, what questions did they ask, how did they contact, who did they contact, etc. you can't possibly know what the results of the poll mean. Consider the source is still a good method.

Gee, who would have guessed that trying to accommodate a party with 23% affiliation would result in a drop in your own approval. Time to jettison the Party of 'Ho, I mean No, and do what the Progressives have been suggesting for, oh, EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember the infamous USA Today poll that had McCain winning by an enormous margin?

Oh yeah, that's the stuff: http://www.pollster.com/blogs/us_mccain_54_obama_44_usatoday.php

Of course, the shittiness of a poll is directly proportional to the amount of media coverage it receives.

You can't make everyone happy on this bill.

You can't make the budget hawks (wherever they were, during the last eight years) happy by refusing to consider union-negotiated health plans for taxation as income.

You can't make the doctors happy by using a public option to beat them down to somewhere around 80% of the Medicare payout for an equivalent course of treatment.

You can't make the insurance companies happy by finally introducing real competition into markets that have largely grown used to monopolization and collusion between providers.

Screw the polls. This is why you're here, Obama. Once you've delivered the object example, the spin won't cut much ice with the 40 million people who will receive minimal health coverage for possibly the first time in their lives, and many other insured persons whose ability to choose between a public and private options will force the private providers to do much more to retain business. Those people may not vote as Democrats, but I guarantee that they will be sensitive to any future moves to destroy or hollow out this program so that somebody making $250,000 or more can pay 2-3% fewer taxes. Those who come after this program with an ax will find themselves run out of office by mobs carrying pitchforks and torches.

The biggest problem I have with the Health Insurance industry is that they have become enablers of the waist and outrageously high fees charged by the health care industry. They are but the tip of the iceberg as it were.

The health care industry needs to be gotten under control. Maybe even first. It has simply become another money watering hole.

C

Seriously, the manner in which the poll is conducted is essential to understanding the results.

If you ask people "do you want the government to spend money on health care for illegal immigrants?" you will get very low numbers in favor.

If you ask people "would you deny health care to an illegal immigrant?" you will see those same people suddenly change their minds.

USA Today/Gallup polls are meaningless. The only poll that means anything is the one taken on the first Tuesday in November. As I recall President Obama won that one in a landslide.

How do you change the argument away from the current mythology of too high taxes and too much gov'ment?

Ask retired people to give up Social Security and Medicare. I'll bet there would be some push back. Whoa, I thought they didn't like socialized medicine.

Wow...I guess even TPM isn't immune from the pathetically predictable "Obama is Failing!" meme that the corporate media is running with.

It's a shame, I really thought better of this outlet. But the last few days have been weak.

The "Obama Wavers on Deadline" lead was left up for the entire weekend, when it was obviously misleading and inflamatory. Yesterday there were some soft updates, and today they jump on the 'chicken little' bandwagon.

Come on TPM, what's the deal?

this looks like an outlier. gallup just had him at 61% yesterday. I don't think this means much, and the questions, as usual, sound irrelevant to actual current events.

"spending too much" - on what? he's getting bad marks on economics here, and that is deserved. high unemployment affects a lot of people, and he doesn't really appear to be doing much about it. that will lose you a lot of love, really fast. especially when you see how the whole bailout process played out. a bunch of crooks were handed hundreds of billions of dollars, no strings attached, and now they're making record profits again off of the suffering of the rest of the country. Obama tried to reel them in, cap their pay, attach conditions, etc and it failed. that looks bad.

as far as on health care, I tend to think this means that people haven't seen him fighting hard enough FOR it so far. he refused to negotiate hard, refused to draw lines in the sand. this is something people are losing their lives and limbs and houses over, and bout 80% of the public wants a real, actual health care system like every other grown-up country has. and it looks very much like we're not going to get that, so some anger is deserved here as well.

these silly polls will be used, no doubt, to argue that Obama has been "too far left" and other such nonsense. really, I think people want to see this guy keep his promises and fight for the things he said up and down he'd fight for. he has done some good things thus far, yes, but he's blown some of the really important stuff. people like him, but if he keeps being ineffective and wallflowerish, people will turn on him. I hope he gets some fire in his belly and starts fighting against these idiot blue dogs in Congress.

Of course, I don't want to see Obama's rating drop. I voted for him. Two things come to mind. First, USAToday and Gallup have tended away from him going way back, and second, when you're in the game, you get dinged. Look at all the contentious issues Obama has been involved in. The fiscal crisis, health care, Sotomayer, Afghanistan. Sure, you can keep your ratings up if you don't attempt anything, but if that were the case, why take the job?

The poll suggests that the steepest drop came from conservative and moderate Democrats. Well, isn't that peachy. I was hoping that with the election of Obama and Democratic majorities the Democratic Party would recover it's long, lost progressive soul. Apparently, that's not going to happen. We now have three disparate factions (liberal, moderate & conservative) of the Democratic Party, each pushing its own platform.

All going against a singular, coordinated, single-minded, obstreperous Republican Party.

Guess who's going to win?

This disapproval comes from a bunch of angry Single Payer folks. We want it ON THE TABLE. We want the insurance cos out!

It's just Reuters manufacturing dissent...
see Steve Benen
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

"WHAT THAT POST/ABC POLL DOES (AND DOES NOT) SAY.... I stopped by the Yahoo News page a few minutes ago and saw the lead headline at the top of the page that reads, "Public support slips for Obama's health plan, poll shows." It quoted a Reuters report that says:

Public support for President Barack Obama's handling of healthcare reform, the pillar of his legislative agenda, has fallen below 50 percent for the first time, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Monday said.

I realize the current media narrative is "public turns on health care reform," but let's clarify this a bit, because it's nearly as misleading as the political attacks that have weakened support for reform in the first place.

The Post-ABC poll asked Americans if they approve of President Obama's handling of various issues. While he enjoys majority support in some areas, 49% approve of his handling of health care, 44% do not.

But that doesn't necessarily reflect opposition to "Obama's health plan." Maybe the president's support on this issue has fallen to 49% because some Americans are disappointed Obama hasn't already pushed the bill through Congress. Maybe they don't like the way he's empowered lawmakers to take the lead in writing the bill. Who knows? The poll doesn't really tell us.

The poll does, however, tell us a few relevant details. For example, when given a choice on who Americans trust more on reforming the health care system, 54% prefer the president, while only 34% back congressional Republicans.

Even more important, when the basics of the plan are described to respondents, including Republican-friendly phrasing ("government-run"), a majority of Americans support the reform proposal. This was left out of the Reuters report altogether.

In an article about poll support for "Obama's health plan," Reuters ignored the only question in the poll about support for Obama's health plan. Odd."
—Steve Benen 4:20 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (13)

This poll was taken when every news channel and headline was suggesting that Obama's health plan may fail getting through Congress. It won't.

So what this poll is telling me that Obama's dealing with health-care is down, polling wise. Wait I saw article after article and MSM story after story, saying that Obama has not been out front enough and telling Congress and the American people what he wants the bill to say. Gosh this is just confusing.

By the way the executive branch executes the laws and it is Congress job to legislate. If we have health-care reform it can not and should not be spearheaded by an overzealous executive, it should be buffered and supported by poll after poll over the last decade which supports the belief that most americans want health-care reform. But yet again this is an opportunity for many of the Presidents enemies both inside and outside washington to show the president their power.

You know what we should do is create regional districts of those that support health-care reform and email and call the hell out of all of Congressmen/women and local media in order to show that the public's main detractor in getting things done is Congress itself. As an American it really a little worrisome to see so much emotion directed at the President to get things done. This is a democracy, it has three branches and as I was always told, one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch. Well looking at Congress over the last couple of decades, I would say that there are definitely some bad apples in Congress against reform on any number of issues.

Note that some of us disapprove because we want and believe in a "single payer" plan.

The strategy ought to be that if a bill is not passed by the recess the admin comes back with a single payer plan out of the break.