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It's going to get worse for Obama (updated)
The American Thinker ^ | August 31, 2009 | Thomas Lifson

Posted on 08/31/2009 4:46:20 PM PDT by Scanian

More grim news for Obama from the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. The Net Approval (strongly approve minus strongly disapprove) index is minus 11. Overall, only 46% of the likely voters polled strongly or somewhat approve of Obama. AT political director Richard Baehr calls the chart below a "shockingly fast decline. It suggests this guy got elected because the stars were aligned, that plus 3/4 of a billion dollars and billions in free positive media coverage."

News editor Ed Lasky passes along this article by Jim McTague of Barrons, noting the damage that liberal Massachusetts is about the inflict on Obama, as the state appoints a Democrat to succeed Ted Kennedy in the Senate, necessitating a change in the state law that Kennedy engineered in order to assure a Democrat in the Senate the last a potential vacancy loomed with John Kerry running for President, with a Republican governor sitting in the State House on Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill is a hotbed of delicious scandal. The national press will home in on the tawdry operation, presenting Democrats in Washington with a Category Five public-relations problem. The president, the Senate and Massachusetts political corruption all will be bound up in one sound bite. Journalists will remind us of the fiasco that ensued when Illinois Democrats hastily appointed Roland Burris to fill Obama's U.S. Senate seat. Burris faces a Senate ethics investigation for failing to disclose information about his relationship with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was indicted on federal corruption charges. This sort of publicity likely will harm Obama's already wobbly popularity numbers.

Ed Lasky has long predicted that Deval Patrick's record in liberal Massachusetts foreshadow the difficulties Obama will experience in office, with voters rapidly becoming disillusioned with the failure to keep the campaign promises engineered for both men by the campaign manager they shared, David Axelrod. McTague notes:

Patrick's popularity, like Obama's, is plunging. He's running for a second term in 2010, but a Boston Globe poll this summer found that only 23% of the voters trust Patrick's handling of the state's economic problems. A poll of 400 likely voters by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service at Suffolk University Law School in Boston found that 47% of them believe that ethics have worsened in state government over the past 10 years. Asked to rate the level of ethics, 2% said they were excellent; 10% said they were good; 49%, fair; and 40% said they were poor.

This is extraordinary. Massachusetts voters are strongly Democratic and historically very forgiving. Update from C. Edmund Wright:

The evolving yet telling Give A Damn Index -- an unofficial iteration of numbers complied by Scott Rasmussen in his widely respected Daily Presidential Tracking Poll -- still show that the President is running out of room with the American public with regard to his poll numbers. The index is designed to show a number of things, among them how many people are seriously engaged in the political issues of the day and how this informed attention is likely to weigh on the President's upcoming poll numbers. Obviously huge events and media coverage will impact this and all polls --and this index is a mathematical distillation of other poll numbers. My use of Rasmussen's Daily Tracking Poll is out of my respect for his methodology and concepts. The idea sprang from my lack of respect in how media pundits and RNC political consultants analyze poll numbers. Both groups tend to focus simply on numbers with little or no regard to intensity or depth of feeling. Today's Rasmussen approval index number is -11, with 41% of the country strongly disapproving while 30% strongly approve. That makes Index A of the Give A Damn Index 71%, meaning that only 29% of the country has less than strong feelings about the President. That is a thin sliver indeed with which to overcome a -11%. Further, Index B of the Give A Damn Index further boxes Obama in statistically. Of the 46% that at least somewhat approve of him, some 65% feel strongly. Of the 53% that at least somewhat disapprove of him, 78% feel strongly. That makes Index B of the Give A Damn Index -13. (Yesterday we reported that Index A was 74% and Index B was -20%. That was mistaken on B. Yesterday's Index B was -13%.) Conclusion: from a statistical point of view, the President is close to a point of no return with regard to opinions held by the Americans who care the most. Additionally, it is far more likely that Obama's numbers will drop from this point as opposed to improving. The longer people hold strong opinions, the more difficult it is for them to be moved by events or media. The less than strong opinions are far more easily swayed by events or media.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2009polls; bhojobapproval; massachusetts; patrick; polls; rasmussen
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1 posted on 08/31/2009 4:46:20 PM PDT by Scanian
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To: Scanian

2 posted on 08/31/2009 4:48:04 PM PDT by Kartographer (".. we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.")
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To: Kartographer

We are nearing the bridge, aren’t we?


3 posted on 08/31/2009 4:49:27 PM PDT by La Lydia
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To: Scanian
The national press will home in on the tawdry operation, presenting Democrats in Washington with a Category Five public-relations problem

Well at least, FOX will. Everybody else will grease past the spectacle. Corruption? What corruption?

4 posted on 08/31/2009 4:49:35 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Proud Sarah-Bot.)
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To: Scanian

Just more racist polls....


5 posted on 08/31/2009 4:50:24 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo (FR...Monthly Donors Wanted...I Upped My Monthly. Now, Up Yours.)
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To: Scanian
Beacon Hill is a hotbed of delicious scandal. The national press will home in on the tawdry operation, presenting Democrats in Washington with a Category Five public-relations problem.

Because, historically, this is precisely what the national press has always done, re: liberal Democrat politicians in Massachusetts.

Kinda.

Sorta.

Only not.

6 posted on 08/31/2009 4:52:12 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle (http://www.conservatives4palin.com/)
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To: Scanian

GOOD!


7 posted on 08/31/2009 4:52:45 PM PDT by golfisnr1
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To: Scanian

I wonder what number he has to hit before he kills the internet.


8 posted on 08/31/2009 4:53:15 PM PDT by Nachoman (Think of life as an adventure you don't survive.)
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To: Scanian

9 posted on 08/31/2009 4:53:55 PM PDT by AdvisorB (Obamatude could be defined by Blago as something tangible, but not quite as tangible as JJJ's offer.)
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To: Scanian

An unasked question - what if Obama doesn’t care about the poll numbers? The best hope in that case is that many of the Democrat legislators may start to drop away and his legislative program blocked.


10 posted on 08/31/2009 4:54:19 PM PDT by Truth29
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To: Nachoman

I don’t imagine 0bama would ever give up power.


11 posted on 08/31/2009 4:54:33 PM PDT by Boardwalk
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Exactly. Anyone who expects the MSM (excluding Fox News and the WSJ) to cover Obama honestly hasn’t been paying attention.


12 posted on 08/31/2009 4:57:02 PM PDT by rbg81 (DRAIN THE SWAMP!!)
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To: rbg81
Anyone who expects the MSM (excluding Fox News and the WSJ) to cover Obama honestly hasn’t been paying attention.

And that's exactly why the MSM poll numbers are worse than The Kenyan's.

13 posted on 08/31/2009 5:00:35 PM PDT by randog (Tap into America!)
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To: Truth29

He may not care about his poll numbers. He has been groomed most of his life to ram an agenda through. If he can do that, the powers that be (Soros, + other weathy liberals) will no doubt take care of him the rest of his life. He may even get a Nobel Prize out of it (since they’ll apparently give them to ANYONE now-a-days). If he doesn’t do that, his base will look on him as a failure. He’ll spend the rest of his life in Carter/Nixon like limbo—isolated, scorned and desperate to convince people that it wasn’t like it was.


14 posted on 08/31/2009 5:01:26 PM PDT by rbg81 (DRAIN THE SWAMP!!)
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To: Scanian
Poll on Facebook today:

Will you vote for Obambi in 2010?

Approximately 500,000 responded.

74% said " No "

15 posted on 08/31/2009 5:03:08 PM PDT by xtinct (The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it. - H. L. Mencken)
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To: Scanian

I greatly admire Thomas Lifson, but I have zero faith in MA voters.


16 posted on 08/31/2009 5:06:04 PM PDT by elizabethgrace (WORLD CHAMPIONS - Park View Little League - Chula Vista, CA !!!!!!)
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To: xtinct
"Will you vote for Obambi in 2010?

Shouldn't that be 100%? Nobody's going to vote for Obambi in 2010. The next election for POTUS is 2012.

-----------------------------------------------------


RESISTOR

Swear allegiance to the flag, whatever flag they offer;
Never hint at what you really feel.
Teach the children quietly for, someday, sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still.

Der Elite Møøsënspåånkængrüppen ØberKømmändø (EMØØK)

17 posted on 08/31/2009 5:07:58 PM PDT by BlueLancer (I'm getting a fine tootsy-frootsying right here...)
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To: AdvisorB
Stamp Malfunction:

The US Postal Service created a stamp with a picture of President Obama on it. The Postal Service noticed that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes.

This enraged the President, and his wife, who demanded a full investigation.

After a month of testing and $34 Billion in congressional spending, a special Presidential Czar of Stickiness presented the following findings:

"The stamp is in perfect order There is nothing wrong with the glue. People are spitting on the wrong side......."

18 posted on 08/31/2009 5:08:05 PM PDT by Liz (When people fear govt, we have tyranny; when govt fears the people, we have freedom.)
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To: Boardwalk

The unbelievable pres__ent that won’t even be able to pass a BUDGET.


19 posted on 08/31/2009 5:09:47 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Proud Sarah-Bot.)
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To: BlueLancer
Shouldn't that be 100%? Nobody's going to vote for Obambi in 2010. The next election for POTUS is 2012.

Well, it is Facebook, after all... ;)

20 posted on 08/31/2009 5:10:24 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle (http://www.conservatives4palin.com/)
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