Do you honestly believe 54% of people have any clue about what's going on with health care let alone support it?

I'm sure they aren't ready to debate the language of the bill, but that wasn't the question. MBBF said that the President needs to put out policies people support and almost every poll(except the one who shan't be named) shows the public does support the outlines of the legislation that's being debated.

Which is a silly poll question because even the people debating the bill don't know 1/2 of what's in the blessed thing. They should have added a follow-up question asking what percentage of those people even know what's in 10 pages of that bill, nonetheless the whole thing. The 'outline' (which is pretty generic and not specific when used in that question) is little more than a fantasy. That usually involves rhetoric saying 'I want a health care system where Grandma Maude and the cripple down the street have the same health care opportunities as Bill Gates'. That's great in theory and everyone agrees with it, but it's not practical. What's actually in the bill is what matters.

So it's equally silly to conclude there's anything substantial behind a supposed drop in support for Obama on healthcare (because people don't understand it).

Like... you... did....

so polls dont matter than since the questions are bunk so you have no way to gauge whether or not there is 'Vast' amounts of support or not sans your microcosm around the lunchroom, eh?

cite a poll when it works for you and slam a poll when it doesnt. awesome. partisan and awesome.

Oh, I totally agree. But you're mistaken regarding me bringing up a poll. My original point had nothing to do with and cited no polls. JPhillips chose that line of argument. I think it's a waste of time, but he wanted to take that path, so I'm more than happy to follow along if that's what interests him. He insinuated that there was universal support in polls outside of Rasmussen, which simply isn't true.

So you had no basis for saying,

unless public and sees doesnt mean 50%+1

I'd guess at least 33% support it simply because it's something Obama wants.

The general concensus that I've seen from MSM coverage and overall polling data is that it's a 50/50 split at best. That's not good support IMO, especially given the electoral mandate behind this president. Do you disagree with that and believe that there is large support for his policies thus far? I disagree with that if you do.

I think your 50/50 at best is off given that even the WaPo poll shows 54% support for the outlines of the current legislation, but regardless, if you get to define "people support" as less than 50% than I guess you're right.

Congress has an approval rating of like 15% and Obama has one of 60%. Why would they not want him to be the guy pushing through the health care policy?

It's always like that though. There are still people who support the Iraq War. There will always be that tight knit part of the base who just believes whatever they are told to. I'd say it's less than 33% though and more like 20%.

I always wonder how any of these people get re-elected with low approval ratings. Although, guess it is more of a 'My guy isn't the problem, it's yours'

Just for the record, Mr. Obama appeared on cue at 12:22 PM today. We laughed as usual. He rarely misses a lunch date. Appearance at a children's hospital today.

I think the low general approval has to do with the partisan hatred towards the leaders on the other side that have been there forever calling the shots. So you're right in that sense.

Don't really think it's partisian. It's a mix of two things. People generally like their representative but don't like the others. It's why we have an issue with spending. Everyone wants it cut back except when it comes to their district.

The other being that gerrymandered districts leaves very few options (if any) come election time.

So it's his fault the media follows him around? Every President does these appearances daily for various things. Obama gets followed around for ratings. Just as after 9/11, everything Bush did got massive media attention.

Oh, I don't think there's any question that the 24/7 news networks are a big part of that. With that said, anyone who thinks that the regularly scheduled lunchtime news conferences aren't a planned part of their PR is fooling themselves. There's a reason he pops on nearly every day during the lunch hour. They know people are watching. The problem, as I iterated in my original post, is that it may be TOO much.

I have little doubt that if I start documenting his lunchtime appearances, I'll be much more accurate than JPhillips would like you to believe.

Let's hope he doesn't try to read them a book.

Ping: Pet Peeve thread

MBBF: If you want to catalogue the next 60 days by all means do so. You stated almost every day, so if he's answering questions or giving a speech at lunch on 50 of those sixty days I will gladly give you credit.

I'm not interested in proving you wrong by any means as much as I'm just curious. I really think that if I keep track of my next 60 days at lunch, 50 of them will have Obama on a news network making a small speech of some sort judging from previous experience. I'd also note that competition probably fuels the increased sightings as well. MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are all on various TV's in the lunch area. If one has Obama on, they all have Obama on no matter how trivial the speech. None want to be one-upped by the other.

I think they are a better judge of what's "too much". They most likely have a lot of polling data they go off to and follow regularly.

The lunchtime press conference is par for the course. The Bush Administration had one daily discussing the war (as well as after 9/11). The coverage stopped when his approval ratings sunk so low that it was just best to keep him out of the public eye. I don't think it matters who the President is though, they'll be out all the time and they'll be doing the lunchtime press conferences, especially during such troubling times.

Silly me, I thought the birth certificate thing didn't have any legs. Poor Rep. Castle looks like he's been punched in the balls. The amazing thing is how many there seem to agree with the crazy lady.

Great opinion article in the NYT:
Op-Ed Columnist - Liberal Suicide March - NYTimes.com

Yeah, it's an opinion, but it's a very well-formed opinion. Seems to be an accurate assessment of the current situation.

Brooks is normally more honest than this. The marginal rates mean squat as what's important is the effective rates. Effective Federal tax rates for the top one percent were around 31% in 2006. Being against the health surtax is a valid position, but saying taxes will be worse than France is hackery.

Details aside, his point about the Democrats blowing their post-Bush political capital seems spot-on.

That was friggin hilarious.

Maybe that will be grounds for the Freeper Revolution that's coming.

I normally like Brooks (and recommend NPR's Brooks vs. E.J. Dionne every Friday afternoon on All Things Considered - with the segment being available on the website each week), but he's taking some sharp angles to get to those conclusions.


Yes and no. As I've stated previously, I don't believe the current (2006-present) GOP malaise will last indefinitely. It hasn't in the past, and it won't happen in the future. The only open question is whether the GOP will rise from the ashes to grab the imaginations of the public or if the Democrats will self-destruct down to a level that makes the GOP electorally relevant again.

While it's true that most of the Democrats on Capitol Hill (and Republicans, for that matter) live within their own cocoon of polling and echo chambers, it's hyperbole to say the party is a) completely led by them and b) that those who are leading are generally just from the coasts and the big cities. In fact, I expected more from Brooks than perpetuating this "liberal coasts" meme. The last couple of elections have shown that the Democrats are a bigger tent than that, and it's a bit rich of Brooks to overlook that.


Other polls don't show anywhere near as much of a slide (including WSJ polls out today). For someone who paragraphs before took the Democrats to task for living in their own polling world, it's interesting that he cherry picks his polls as opposed to even just aggregating them.


The rest of the piece is interesting, but I think he's overstating things. As I said in my "Hopes & Predictions" post (probably on page 2 or 3 of this thread), I kind of assumed that the House & Senate leadership would end up at loggerheads with Obama at some point and it looks like my prediction (not my hope, alas) is coming to fruition.

It would have been more interesting had Brooks delved deeper into this development, instead of just concluding that Obama's been content to follow the lead of House & Senate leadership, which just isn't the case if you look behind the scenes. Clearly you can sense the frustration in the Executive Branch with Pelosi, Reid, et. al., especially when you consider it was Obama who brought the landslide in November, not the much-maligned leadership of Congress.


As a Democrat, my frustration lies with the House & Senate leadership, who seem to be still playing political games instead of getting real work done. They're trying to craft legislation that gives goodies to all of their allies and spin it as good & fiscally responsible, all the while ignoring the much better proposals coming out of the White House. And in so doing they're further alienating the fiscal conservative Democrats (who have been a big part of the new Democratic blood on Capitol Hill the past few elections) and potential moderate allies on the GOP side.

All of which is crazy, given their majorities. Why continue to play spinning games when you've just come off an election where you trounced the competition? Are they really worried they don't have the votes for this kind of thing? I didn't see Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich or Tip O'Neill ever worry about that BS. "You vote against the party, son, and I'll take so much away from you that all you'll do each day is sit in your office and answer letters from constituents."

The fact is that there's probably a lot less distance between Obama's technocrats and the Blue Dogs and moderate GOPers than there is between those three groups and the Congressional leadership. At the core of a lot of Obama's proposals is the requirement to measure the outcomes of programs, and to ensure accountability, ideas that I think a lot of fiscal moderates & conservatives can (and should) get behind as they come directly from the private sector where you do, in fact, have to balance your books.

Such a concept is simply beyond most Congresscritters (of either party), especially those who have been there far too long. So anyway, it would have been interesting for Brooks to focus on that some more, but mostly his ends up being too much of a partisan piece this time around.

Obama daily lunch appearance at 11:52 AM today in front of the White House. 2/2.

Any talk on Obama's Gitmo policy being postponed another 6 months? After all the hatred of Bush over this, you figure they would have worked out how to deal with it by now...

From a hatred standpoint, bear in mind that there's a different between a President that's working towards the solution you want, even if it is taking more time than expected, and a President that was actively resisting the solution you want.

It's a lot easier to blame the guy who made the fuckup then the guy who is having a hard time untangling the fuckup.

My point is more along the lines that maybe this wasn't as easy or as cut-and-dried as everyone wanted to make it out to be when attacking Bush over it.

We primarily attacked Bush over it when Gitmo was still full of a) innocent cab drivers and b) people who could be successfully cycled through the civilian court system. Once that stuff got taken care of, perhaps the urgency dried up, but how could you expect people in 2008 to believe Bush's claim that "it isn't that simple" when he said that when Gitmo was full of innocent cab drivers (I'm using hyperbole here, of course)?

Plus, Obama's made a goal of resolving it, regardless of how not cut-and-dried it is, while Bush never had a goal of resolving it, which makes it completely different.

Context matters here, a lot.

I think that could be applied as a general statement to most of Obama's campaign promises at this point. Gitmo, stimulus, health coverage, cap and trade to name a few. None appear to be as cut and dried as he made them out to be during the campaign.

That's an opinion stated as fact. Why resolve what is already resolved? It was far from unanamous that something was necesarily broken.

I don't think that surprises anyone even vaguely familiar with the concept of "campaign promises".

That's rich, coming from you.


When there's a spate of Supreme Court cases that indicate you've done something wrong, and when you happen to be a Republican and even Antonin Scalia agrees you've done something wrong, then it's probably not resolved.

I think I've been more cautious in my comments of late to avoid that.


Sure, there are exceptions within the ranks at Gitmo, but as Mr. Obama has already found out and readily admitted, there are going to be a number of prisoners that we will keep in jail indefinitely without trial, which is a direct contradiction to his campaign promise. He made a promise that simply could not be delivered.

Considering it appears Congress is leading Obama around by the nose rather than the other way around, I don't think so. Though I do realize why some Democrats may think Brooks' article unfair. He is a conservative though, even though he may be the left's favorite conservative. So every once in a while he may tell the facts the left doesn't want to hear. ;)

SHOCKED, I SAY!

Why is this EVEN Scalia comment included? After all, Scalia has gone much further than SCOTUS justices like Breyer on detainee rights (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld). Are we going to start calling Breyer a right winger now?

His promise was to close Gitmo. If a remedy can be found to keep them indefinitely (or, better, try and convict them using a modified system) in, say, a U.S. jail that already houses terrorists, he'll have kept his promise, in letter and in spirit.


I guess I just don't see it that way, yet. In fact, I expect Obama's influence over Congress to grow, not weaken. And a mere 6 months of legislative battles doesn't seem like a lot of evidence upon which to base these sweeping generalizations.

Because Scalia has shown a predilection to support the exercise of Executive power. When even he suggests limits upon it, I would think it's notable.

Plenty of left bloggers also have noted that Obama hasn't really flexed any muscles on big issues and has let Congress dictate things. If you can't use the bully pulpit to force your vision on Congress in the first 100-200 days, you are not going to be able to successfully use it later.

After all, there is a reason why people look to the beginning of a term when the President has the most power. The President's power wanes, not grows, as time goes on from the First 100 days, unless some sort of crisis happens.

Scalia is not Thomas.

And it's definitely easier to criticize the guy in power when you don't have a full understanding of the roadblocks to your candyland solutions.

I wonder what Obama would have done (vs. what he thinks he would have done, and what his supporters think he would have done) if he was the president after 9/11. What would he do with the terror suspects that were captured? Try them all in civilian courts? He's even conceded now that that's not practical. Obama would have had some version of Guantanamo Bay. We'll never know if it would have been "better" than the one we have.