MSNBC:“Totaldisconnect”betweenObama’srhetoriconeconomy

MSNBC: “Total disconnect” between Obama’s rhetoric on economy and reality for voters

posted at 2:01 pm on August 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Worth a watch, especially on this particular network even though Morning Joe offers much more reality than most of the rest of MSNBC’s schedule. Today’s reminder of reality comes from Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent Carol Lee, who points out that the sunny rhetoric from Barack Obama and his administration has a “total disconnect” to the reality for most Americans, as seen in the latest NBC/WSJ poll.

Time for another pivot?

“The President was campaigning, raising money in California a few weeks ago,” Lee notes, “and he was saying, ‘People feel better than they did five years ago’ … some of the folks who participated in this poll explicitly said that they don’t feel better than they did five years ago.” Lee pointed out one particularly bad metric in the poll, which was “the 79% of people who think their kids’ future is not going to be better than their own — I mean, that’s a huge number.”

Actually, the number is 76% rather than 79%, either of which is a huge number. In fact, it’s the highest in the NBC/WSJ poll series, far exceeding the 57% in June 2009 at the start of the recovery, and the 56% in September 2008 when the Great Recession sharply deepened. The last time this series asked that question was May 2012, and at that time 63% felt that the next generation would do worse than the current one. Today’s reading is the highest since September 1993, when the US had already begun a much more significant recovery than the Obama recovery of today.

Interestingly, though, the pessimism isn’t quite as apparent in the other question on America’s future. Six in ten believe America is in a state of decline, as opposed to 38% who don’t, but that’s hardly the worst result in the series. In September 2008, again at the crest of the Great Recession, 74% thought America was in a state of decline. By January 2011, though, the question got a 54/42 for decline, so the 60/38 shows that even that wan optimism has ebbed away a bit.

On the other hand, 50% now think the economy is recovering, although 23% believe it’s only doing so for the wealthy. Bragging about the stock market probably won’t help Obama on this score, in other words. Only 27% believe that Obamanomics is lifting all boats in this recovery, and 47% don’t think we’re improving at all.

Lee and Joe Scarborough are right about the “total disconnect” between the White House rhetoric and the reality on the ground for most Americans. That will make it difficult for Democrats to talk about the economy in the midterm elections, even though it’s by far and away the top priority for voters in this cycle, without looking like complete shills for an incompetent and out-of-touch administration. That’s why they’re planning to talk about immigration (also a disaster for Obama in this poll, by the way), contraception, climate change, and pretty much everything else that voters don’t care about in order to distract them from the failure of Obama on the economy. That only worked, though, when Obama was on the ticket — and after the last twenty months of incompetence, that sale won’t work a second time anyway.

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, economy, midterms, MSNBC, NBC/WSJ poll, Obamanomics, pessimism

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

Obamaapprovalfallsto40/54inNBC/WSJpoll

Obama approval falls to 40/54 in NBC/WSJ poll

posted at 10:01 am on August 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

How low can he go? Senate Democrats won’t be fans of this new version of “Limbo Rock,” because it’s Barack Obama’s plummeting approval numbers that have them in limbo, wondering whether they will end up on the wrong end of another electoral wave in November. The new NBC/WSJ poll puts the President’s approval number at 40%, its lowest in the series, and the shift is coming from Democrats themselves:

As for the politicians measured in the NBC/WSJ poll, President Obama’s overall job rating stands at an all-time low of 40 percent, a one-point drop from June.

That decline comes from slightly lower support from Democrats and African-American respondents. …

And Obama’s favorable/unfavorable rating remains upside down at 40 percent positive, 47 percent negative.

The takeaway there is that Americans are no longer separating Obama from his job performance. That may be because his attacks on his opposition have become increasingly personal and whiny, complaining about “hatin’ on” him, and so on. Or it may just be a realization after nearly six years that Obama just can’t be separated from his office in the same way that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush could be. That sharp decline in personal favorability no longer buffers Obama from the failures of his administration.

How bad is that personal favorability? Even the overall number doesn’t really do justice to the collapse. Very negative now exceeds very positive by eleven points, 22/33, the worst since December in the middle of the ObamaCare crisis, when the overall was 42/46. In April, it was 24/28 and 44/41 overall. Even during the midterm elections four years ago when the Republican wave was forming, the worst Obama got was a 26/27 on the passionate ends of the spectrum in August with a 46/41 overall.

The full job rating for Obama is 40/54, both of which are new records for Obama in this series. The 54% disapproval ties Obama’s ratings in March and December, during the ObamaCare rollout debacle. Disapproval has now been a majority since late October, after only flirting with it twice before then during his second term.

On the economy, Obama gets an almost-identical 42/53, which actually has been an improvement of late; it had been 39/58 in December and 41/56 in March. Foreign policy, though, has been a disaster, as Obama fell again to a new low of 36/60. In December 2012, Obama got a 52/40, and last December it was 44/48. He’s been cratering ever since. And on the crises that have erupted on the foreign-policy front, Obama flunks across the board:

• MH17 shootdown: 26/37 satisfaction with US actions
• Ukraine/Russia conflict: 23/43
• Syria: 18/37
• Gaza war: 17/45
• Rise of ISIS: 14/42
• Immigration crisis: 11/64

Obama had better think twice about making the midterms about immigration. That’s about as complete of a vote of no confidence in an American head of state as it gets.

By the way, while Democrats attempt to rebrand the “war on women” for the midterms, this is what NBC found that people actually care about:

Even though the recession ended years ago and even though the U.S. economy has created 200,000-plus jobs over the past six months, a plurality of Americans – 49 percent – believe the economy is still in a recession. (However, that percentage is the lowest it’s been since the Great Recession began, and 50 percent of respondents believe the economy is improving.)

What’s more, a combined 71 percent say the recession personally impacted them “a lot” or “just some,” and 64 percent say it’s still having an effect on them.

Then there are these numbers in the poll:

• 40 percent say someone in their household lost a job in the past five years;
• 27 percent say they have more than $5,000 in student-loan debt for either themselves or their children;
• 20 percent have more than $2,000 in credit card debt they are unable to pay off month to month;
• and 17 percent say they have a parent or a child over 21 years old living with them for financial or health reasons.

“People are continuing to tell us what ways [the Great Recession] is still impacting them today,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. “Those stories are pretty grim.”

Oddly, it’s also what Democrats don’t want to discuss, too … except for the occasional pivot to distract from the latest Obama administration failure.

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, economy, favorability, foreign policy, NBC/WSJ poll

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

Mitchell:HillaryClinton“alittlebitoutof

Mitchell: Hillary Clinton “a little bit out of touch”

posted at 9:21 am on June 30, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

The Huffington Post called this “harsh words,” but under the circumstances it sounds more like a qualified defense. David Gregory asked Andrea Mitchell why Hillary Clinton has come under such harsh scrutiny already when “she’s not even a candidate,” which is a laughable premise on which to deconstruct the past three weeks. Mitchell reminds Gregory that Hillary launched a book tour on her own initiative, and then says that the big takeaway is that the presumptive frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is “rusty,” and that she should stop giving paid speeches:

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell had some harsh words for Hillary Clinton during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday.

Mitchell told host David Gregory that Clinton is “rusty” and “out of touch,” to judge by recent comments the former secretary of state made during her ongoing book tour.

“She is a little bit out of touch,” Mitchell said, “despite all of her work and all of her connection to hardworking people in the middle class.” …

“It’s a little bit of lack of self-awareness when she talks about being dead broke and she then tried to fix it, but still not getting the language, you know, politically correct,” Mitchell said.

The problem with Hillary over the past few weeks has not been that she’s continuing to get paid for speeches. It’s that she can’t speak straight when it comes to her own wealth and standard of living. She wants it both ways — to live like a One Percenter while pretending to be down with the “struggle” of Occupy Wall Street. It doesn’t work that way, especially when Wall Street sticks $20 million into your husband’s pockets for a few speeches over the years.

That’s not a lack of self-awareness. It’s flat-out hypocrisy. This book tour didn’t happen spontaneously; it was a long-planned effort to shape the political battlefield for the 2016 presidential campaign. The book was written for that purpose (which is why it spends 600 pages saying next to nothing, as reviewers have lamented), and the interviews carefully selected for maximum impact. Hillary had months to prepare for questions about her income — after all, it’s Democrats who made class warfare their central strategy over the last three years. The stumbles over the last three weeks aren’t about being “rusty,” but being tone-deaf in the first place.

That tone-deafness translates into a big problem on public trust for Hillary Clinton. While a thin majority believes her to be relatable — boosted by 86% among Democrats — her trustworthiness is under water in an NBC/WSJ poll taken during her first week of the tour:

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found 55% of all voters think Mrs. Clinton is “knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency,” but more voters disagree than agree with the statement that she is “honest and straightforward.”

The poll results highlight a problem that has dogged Mrs. Clinton since her 2008 campaign. Her three decades in national politics have cemented an image of an experienced public servant with the chops to be president but who has a tougher time making a personal connection with voters and gaining their trust.

Today, 38% of voters say she is “honest and straightforward,” compared with 40% who say she isn’t. That figure is better for Mrs. Clinton than in March 2008, during the Democratic primaries, when 33% said she was honest and 43% said she wasn’t. But she may have trouble making up more of that ground as she moves out of her self-imposed break from politics and is increasingly seen as a 2016 presidential candidate.

Pretending to not be “truly well off” after making more than a hundred million dollars in the past 23 years — and scoring a $14 million bonus for her latest memoir — didn’t make her appear any more trustworthy or straightforward, either. The Washington Post uses this first-week poll result to argue today that she’s not doing real damage to her standing:

Although D.C. gossiped endlessly about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ”inartful” comments on her wealth, most Democrats don’t seem to have paid attention — or just don’t care.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll shows that 86 percent of Democrats think she can relate to average Americans “as well as” other potential 2016 presidential candidates, despite her “position and economic circumstances.’’

As you might guess, she fares less well among all other voters — although she still has the backing of a solid majority of all voters who don’t see her as the next Thurston Howell III. The poll found that 55 percent of all people think she’s as relatable as other possible candidates, with 37 percent disagreeing.

But that doesn’t mean Clinton has nothing to worry about. The “as well as” clause in the poll’s question probably waters down negative reactions to the Clinton family’s wealth and how she has talked about it in recent days. That’s because (1) we really just don’t know who those other candidates will be, and (2) when we do meet those candidates, people might not view them as very “in touch” (see: Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis). If people were simply asked whether Clinton was relatable, full stop, the numbers might be a little lower.

There’s also the fact that these gaffes continued well past the period in time in which this poll was taken. The original comment about being “dead broke” might have been shrugged off by many as a one-off fumble, but at the end of three weeks it’s apparent that Hillary really thinks she can sell herself as a member of the struggling proletariat. The more she tries to sell that, the less credible and relatable she will become … even to Democrats.

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Tags: "truly well off", 2016 election, Andrea Mitchell, class warfare, dead broke, hard choices, Hillary Clinton, NBC/WSJ poll, wealth

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

MNreporter:Yeah,wedidn’thearanythingnew

MN reporter: Yeah, we didn’t hear anything new from Obama on this visit

posted at 6:01 pm on June 27, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

President Barack Obama came to my neck of the woods this week in an effort to pivot to the economy … and gripe about Republicans being mean to him. Mission accomplished on the second goal, but Obama didn’t score well with the local media on the first. KSTP reporter Tom Hauser reports that Obama didn’t have anything new to say to Minnesotans in his economic speech, calling it a “campaign rally” and a “pep rally.” As far as pivots go, Hauser told his audience that “we didn’t hear anything new,” except Obama telling people not to get cynical:

He had plenty to say about Republicans who “block me and call me names,” though:

“They don’t do anything, except block me and call me names,” an indignant Obama said against a backdrop of sailboats and a band shell shaped like a castle. He insisted that as the nation works to restore middle-class prosperity after the recession, congressional Republicans are the only holdout.

Playfully warning his audience that he was in the mood to “say what’s on my mind,” Obama accused Republicans of letting greed and gridlock perpetrate an economic system that is rigged against American families. He said he gets the sense that Republicans just don’t get what Americans are going through.

“The basic attitude is everybody is just crazy out there. If you read the fine print, it turns out the things you care about, right now, Democrats are proposing,” Obama said.

It’s worth pointing out that Obama had carte blanche for his economic agenda for the first two years of his presidency, which resulted in $800 billion in wasted and gimmicky stimulus spending and the worst US economic recovery in decades. (The civilian participation rate in the workforce is still at a 36-year low.) Voters put the GOP in charge of the House in part to “block” that agenda and offer new direction in policy — and the House has passed dozens of bills that do just that. The Senate, in control of Obama’s fellow Democrats, “block” those bills from getting a vote and then “block” Senate Republicans from offering amendments to Democratic legislation in the upper chamber.

The lack of anything new is one very good reason why Republicans aren’t rushing to endorse Obama’s economic agenda. It’s also why Obama is falling in the polls, both on the economy and overall. After all, when 54% of the public rejects Obama’s leadership and his economic policies, why should Republicans do nothing but shut up and follow? If all Obama has for the next two and a half years is whining and regurgitation, the NBC/WSJ result on leadership might end up being a high-water mark.

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Tags: Barack Obama, economy, leadership, Minnesota, NBC/WSJ poll, Obamanomics, pivot

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

NBC/WSJpollfinds54%havenoconfidencein

NBC/WSJ poll finds 54% have no confidence in Obama’s leadership

posted at 8:41 am on June 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

The sixth-year blues have caught up to Barack Obama … with a vengeance. In an NBC/WSJ poll taken before the meltdown in Iraq, Obama gets his lowest marks ever on foreign policy, where his claim to “smart power” has evidently reached its expiration date. But the real danger to Obama and to Democrats vying for office in less than five months is the vote of no confidence in Obama’s leadership:

The percentage of Americans approving of President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy issues has dropped to the lowest level of his presidency as he faces multiple overseas challenges, including in Iraq,according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Additionally, the public is evenly split on whether Obama is a competent manager of the federal bureaucracy. And a majority of respondents – 54 percent – believe the term-limited president is no longer able to lead the country. …

Just 37 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy, which is an all-time low in the survey, while 57 percent disapprove, an all-time high.

What’s more, by a 44 percent-to-30 percent margin, Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to secure the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five imprisoned Taliban fighters.

Obama’s job approval comes in at 41/53, the second-worst in the NBC/WSJ series (March 2014′s 41/54 is the nadir). The 37/57 on foreign policy is a record low for Obama, and the economy is nearly at a historical low at 41/54. But it’s the leadership issues that will make headlines today. In terms of competency, Obama now ranks below Bush at the analogous point in time of his predecessor’s presidency. Post-Katrina Bush had a 53/46 rating for competency, while it’s an even split at 50/50 for Obama. Thirty-one percent say Obama isn’t competent at all, compared to 24% for Bush in the same time frame, and that’s a ten-point increase for Obama from last June.

That last metric isn’t an anomaly. Only 15% believe that Obama’s performance has improved over the past year, while 41% think it has gotten worse. The top areas in which those respondents believe Obama has gotten worse are ObamaCare, foreign policy — and the Taliban 5 swap for Bowe Bergdahl, with the economy and Obama’s dishonesty rounding out the top five. Small wonder, then, that only 42% of respondents think Obama can still lead this nation, while 54% reject Obama’s leadershio-p.

As Chuck Todd tells Morning Joe “this is the public saying your presidency is over”:

I’d disagree with Chuck on what this means for Democrats, though. While it’s true that the Congressional polling isn’t a disaster for Democrats, voters will be looking for ways to fill the leadership vacuum and deal with the perceived incompetence and dishonesty at the White House — and they won’t be choosing Democrats for that mission.

• Share on Facebook 1
• 1 SHARES

Tags: Barack Obama, Chuck Todd, dishonesty, economy, foreign policy, incompetence, leadership, lies, NBC/WSJ poll

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

SenateDemsplanvoteamendingtheFirstAmendment

Senate Dems plan vote amending the First Amendment to curtail criticism

posted at 12:41 pm on April 30, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Think of the big issues facing the American public. We now routinely borrow about 40 cents on the dollar for our federal budget, our entitlement programs are heading for a fiscal collapse in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, and our economy has stagnated through nearly five years of Democratic-run economic policy in the “recovery.” What do Senate Democrats plan to do about this? Make it harder for us to complain about it, as John “Doc Zero” Hayward quipped on Twitter:

Sure, Democrats have killed the US economy, but they'll fix the problem by making it harder for us to complain about it.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) April 30, 2014

Conservatives: Amend the Constitution to preserve liberty. Liberals: The First Amendment has got to go.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) April 30, 2014

Senate Democrats will schedule a vote this year on a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance as they face tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads from conservative groups.

The Senate will vote on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would overturn two recent court cases that have given corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals free rein to spend freely on federal races.

“The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop now,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who announced the plan.

“The only way to undo the damage the court has done is to pass Senator Udall’s amendment to the Constitution, and Senate Democrats are going to try to do that,” he said.

Schumer said the vote would take place by year’s end and called on Republican colleagues to join Democrats to ensure “the wealthy can’t drown out middle-class voices in our Democracy.”

Yes, that will be amusing to watch. For the record, constitutional amendments require two-thirds votes for passage in both chambers of Congress before going to the states, three-quarters of which must vote to ratify it. I doubt that Senate Democrats will get three-quarters of their own caucus to vote to amend the First Amendment, but if they do, that will make a really tasty talking point for Republicans in the midterms. “Democrats can’t defend their policy failures,” they’ll argue, “so they want to keep people from spending their own money to criticize them.” And they’ll be right.

If Democrats think this will allow them to ride a wave of Occupy Wall Street populism, they’d better look again at the polling this week. Despite spending weeks on the Senate Floor ranting about the Koch Brothers, Harry Reid’s McCarthyite campaign of Kochsteria has resulted in … almost nothing. In the NBC/WSJ poll linked earlier, only 31% had an opinion about the Koch Brothers at all, and only 21% thought of them negatively in a poll where 43% of the respondents admit to voting for Obama in 2012. Michael Bloomberg, one of the left’s multibillionaire activists, got a 26% negative score, and the Democratic Party got a 37% negative score. (The GOP got 44%.) Nearly twice as many respondents think of Barack Obama negatively than they do the Koch Brothers, despite weeks of hard-sell demonization from top Democratic Party leaders.

If Democrats (and Republicans) want to act seriously to take billionaires out of the political game, they’re aiming at the wrong Supreme Court decision. They should pass an amendment repealing Wickard v Filburn‘s impact on the interstate commerce clause. That decision shifted massive political power from the states to Washington DC by defining practically everything as interstate commerce — including non-commerce. Killing Wickard would shift most regulatory power back to the states, and take the corruption out of Washington DC as the stakes would become too small for billionaire investment. Don’t expect Senate Democrats to do anything meaningful on crony capitalism, though … or anything meaningful at all, if this stunt is all they have.

Tags: Chuck Schumer, Citizens United, First Amendment, Kochsteria, Michael Bloomberg, NBC/WSJ poll, Senate Democrats, Supreme Court, Wickard v Filburn

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

NBC/WSJpollputsObamaapprovalat44%

NBC/WSJ poll puts Obama approval at 44%

posted at 8:01 am on April 30, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll put Barack Obama at his recent nadir on approval ratings. The White House gets better news from today’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, but as its pollster says, there is a difference between better and good. Obama’s approval rebounded slightly to 44% and his personal favorability has gone back to slightly positive, but the midterms still look bad for Democrats nonetheless:

But in spite of slight improvements from March, the poll still represent difficult terrain for Obama and the Democratic Party with six months to go until November’s midterm elections.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart, says the results highlight the difference between “better” and “good” for Democrats.

“These are very, very difficult numbers,” McInturff explains.

Hart borrows a baseball analogy to make a similar point: “It’s like the difference between from being five runs down, to one or two.”

Some highlights from the poll:

• Obama’s job approval rating now stands at 44 percent, a three-point increase from last month, though that movement falls within the poll’s margin of error.
• For the first time since early October – before the federal health care website’s disastrous launch became a months-long national story – the president’s personal favorable/unfavorable is right-side up, at 44 percent positive and 41 percent negative.
• And 36 percent see the health care law as a good idea, versus 46 percent who view it as a bad idea – an uptick from 35 percent and 49 percent respectively back in March.

NBC might put a nice spin on this poll, but it’s not good news, and it’s really not that much better news either. First, the improvements aren’t really all that significant. Even on job approval, Obama’s still 44/50, which is underwater outside of the MOE. Neither of the numbers has moved outside the MOE since early October, when Obama was at 47/48. His approval numbers since have ranged from 41-44, and disapproval from 50-54. This change is statistical noise, especially given the very clear triggering event in the ObamaCare launch.

The same is true of his personal favorability. It’s 44/41 now, but it was 41/44 in March, 42/44 in January, 42/46 in December, and 41/45 in late October. At the start of ObamaCare, it was 47/41. Again, today’s result is basically statistical noise.

By the way, this poll was taken between April 23-27, well after Obama declared that “the debate is over” on ObamaCare and took his victory lap over the supposed eight million enrollments. That didn’t get even so much as a blip in this poll series. That should be an indication that Obama’s not moving the needle any longer. In fact, the NBC/WSJ poll asked whether respondents feel more or less confident in ObamaCare based on what they’ve heard over “the last few weeks,” and the results are … less than encouraging for Democrats. Eleven percent feel more confident, while 28% feel less confident, and 58% haven’t changed their opinion at all.

We will hear plenty today about a rebound in polling for Obama, but this is actually bad news for the White House, and especially for incumbent Democrats foolish enough to take Obama’s advice and run on ObamaCare.

Update: One last point about the sample — only 34% of respondents voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, while 43% voted for Obama. That’s low for both, but Obama only won that election by half that gap — and I think the turnout model won’t be as friendly as 2012 was to Democrats this November, either.

Tags: Barack Obama, job approval, midterms, NBC/WSJ poll, ObamaCare

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

NBC/WSJpollshowsObamaapprovalatnewlow

NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama approval at new low of 41%

posted at 8:01 am on March 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The downward trajectory of Barack Obama’s approval ratings continues, this time in one of the friendliest poll series the White House enjoys. The President plunged to a new low in the NBC/WSJ poll approval ratings, with a 41/54 gap that aligns well with most other recent polling (except for a 48/48 tie in the latest Bloomberg poll). The bigger issue for Democrats is that voters are more inclined to use the midterms to punish Obama than praise him — and that may be a longer-term problem than just the midterms:

Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are facing difficult political headwinds less than eight months before November’s midterm elections, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

• Obama’s job-approval rating has dropped to a low point of 41 percent, never a good position for the party controlling the White House;
• By a 33 percent to 24 percent margin, Americans say their vote will be to signal opposition to the president rather than to signal support, though 41 percent say their vote will have nothing to do about Obama;
• Forty-eight percent of voters say they’re less likely to vote for a candidate who’s a solid supporter of the Obama administration, versus 26 percent who say they’re more likely to vote for that candidate;
• And Republicans hold a one-point edge over Democrats on which party registered voters prefer to control Congress, 44 percent to 43 percent. While that’s within the poll’s margin of error, Republicans have traditionally fared well in elections when they’ve held a slight lead on this question.

“The wind is in our face,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “There is an advantage for Republicans right now.”

If the wind is in the face of Democrats, it’s at gale force in this poll. The right/wrong direction was at 41/53 just before the 2012 election, which Obama barely won; it’s now 26/65. The approval rating for Obama is worse now than it was when HHS laid an egg last October with ObamaCare.

Obama’s approval on the economy slightly improved from December’s all-time low in this series of 39/58, but the 41/56 rating now is (a) a margin-of-error change, and (b) the second-worst of the series. His ratings on foreign policy have now dropped to an all-time low as well of 41/53, although it was 41/49 last August, during the Syrian “red line” debacle. This may be a better indicator of Obama’s fall from polling grace, too, since foreign policy had been a strong suit in his polling. August 2013′s poll was the first time in his presidency that those ratings had gone negative. Now they match his overall rating; the red line, ObamaCare, and now Russia seems to have stripped the illusions of competence from the eyes of respondents.

The problem for Obama and Democrats in this poll is that his personal likeability no longer keeps his overall numbers afloat. The “personal feelings” rating for Obama is now 41/44, with 15% neutral, in this poll. At the beginning of October, Obama scored 47/41, and before the August “red line” debacle it was 48/40. The “very positive” rating in this survey of 21% is the lowest of the series; a year ago it was 30%, and at the time of the last election it was 34%.

This might not be the only election in which Democrats find the wind in their faces, either. A year ago, Hillary Clinton’s personal favorability was 56/29, with 32% very positive about the recently-retired Secretary of State and only 15% very negative. Those poll results came seven months after Benghazi, too. Today it’s 41/34, and 23/22 on the “very” ratings for the presumptive 2016 front-runner, respectively. If you need evidence of just how big a boat anchor Obama may be on his fellow Democrats, one need look no further than that change.

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, NBC/WSJ poll

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

NBC/WSJpollshowsObamaapprovalatnewlow

NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama approval at new low of 41%

posted at 8:01 am on March 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The downward trajectory of Barack Obama’s approval ratings continues, this time in one of the friendliest poll series the White House enjoys. The President plunged to a new low in the NBC/WSJ poll approval ratings, with a 41/54 gap that aligns well with most other recent polling (except for a 48/48 tie in the latest Bloomberg poll). The bigger issue for Democrats is that voters are more inclined to use the midterms to punish Obama than praise him — and that may be a longer-term problem than just the midterms:

Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are facing difficult political headwinds less than eight months before November’s midterm elections, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

• Obama’s job-approval rating has dropped to a low point of 41 percent, never a good position for the party controlling the White House;
• By a 33 percent to 24 percent margin, Americans say their vote will be to signal opposition to the president rather than to signal support, though 41 percent say their vote will have nothing to do about Obama;
• Forty-eight percent of voters say they’re less likely to vote for a candidate who’s a solid supporter of the Obama administration, versus 26 percent who say they’re more likely to vote for that candidate;
• And Republicans hold a one-point edge over Democrats on which party registered voters prefer to control Congress, 44 percent to 43 percent. While that’s within the poll’s margin of error, Republicans have traditionally fared well in elections when they’ve held a slight lead on this question.

“The wind is in our face,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “There is an advantage for Republicans right now.”

If the wind is in the face of Democrats, it’s at gale force in this poll. The right/wrong direction was at 41/53 just before the 2012 election, which Obama barely won; it’s now 26/65. The approval rating for Obama is worse now than it was when HHS laid an egg last October with ObamaCare.

Obama’s approval on the economy slightly improved from December’s all-time low in this series of 39/58, but the 41/56 rating now is (a) a margin-of-error change, and (b) the second-worst of the series. His ratings on foreign policy have now dropped to an all-time low as well of 41/53, although it was 41/49 last August, during the Syrian “red line” debacle. This may be a better indicator of Obama’s fall from polling grace, too, since foreign policy had been a strong suit in his polling. August 2013′s poll was the first time in his presidency that those ratings had gone negative. Now they match his overall rating; the red line, ObamaCare, and now Russia seems to have stripped the illusions of competence from the eyes of respondents.

The problem for Obama and Democrats in this poll is that his personal likeability no longer keeps his overall numbers afloat. The “personal feelings” rating for Obama is now 41/44, with 15% neutral, in this poll. At the beginning of October, Obama scored 47/41, and before the August “red line” debacle it was 48/40. The “very positive” rating in this survey of 21% is the lowest of the series; a year ago it was 30%, and at the time of the last election it was 34%.

This might not be the only election in which Democrats find the wind in their faces, either. A year ago, Hillary Clinton’s personal favorability was 56/29, with 32% very positive about the recently-retired Secretary of State and only 15% very negative. Those poll results came seven months after Benghazi, too. Today it’s 41/34, and 23/22 on the “very” ratings for the presumptive 2016 front-runner, respectively. If you need evidence of just how big a boat anchor Obama may be on his fellow Democrats, one need look no further than that change.

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, NBC/WSJ poll

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

WSJ/NBCpre-SOTUpollputsObamaapprovalat43%

WSJ/NBC pre-SOTU poll puts Obama approval at 43%

posted at 12:41 pm on January 28, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Will Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech end up being a big non-sequitur? According to early leaks from the White House about the speech, Obama intends to focus on income inequality, infrastructural spending, and climate change.  According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, Obama may as well be talking Greek in relation to the priorities of the electorate:

President Barack Obama will lay out his agenda for the year on Tuesday night before a nation increasingly worried about his abilities, dissatisfied with the economy and fearful for the country’s future, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. …

At the same time, the public supports many of the themes and policy ideas Mr. Obama looks set to emphasize in his annual State of the Union address to Congress. Large majorities of respondents said they want the White House and lawmakers to focus on job creation and early-childhood education, and a slimmer majority favored increasing the minimum wage. …

White House aides say the president also plans to use the nationally televised address to make a case for increased efforts—through executive action, if necessary—to expand hiring, infrastructure development, job training and educational opportunities, while taking moves to combat climate change.

Nearly three-quarters of poll respondents said the president should also make a top priority of reducing the federal budget deficit, an objective that Mr. Obama hasn’t emphasized recently. Deficit reduction ranked second as a priority, after job creation, among a list of issues presented to respondents.

In other words, Obama will be talking about greater government intervention and spending just at the time when more than 70% of Americans want him to start working on job creation and deficit reduction. Expect some bones tossed in those directions, but the emphasis will clearly be on income inequality and his frustration with Congress, a frustration that is largely self-inflicted. Rather than address the priorities shared by most Americans, Obama will once again use the national stage to complain about his own political predicament, one largely of his own making.

Small wonder Obama goes into this SOTU with the second-worst sixth-year numbers in history. His job approval level is 43/51. The poll also shows that Obama’s personal numbers haven’t recovered much at all, with his 42/44 almost identical to December’s 42/46 and October’s 41/45. Last summer, those numbers were 48/40. It’s worse on expectations for his performance in 2014, though, with 40% either optimistic or hopeful and 59% uncertain or pessimistic.

Perhaps in part that’s due to his choice of issues these days. In the poll, 91% of respondents want job creation prioritized, and 74% want deficit reduction. Only 45% want “reducing income inequality between the rich and the poor,” which comes in fourth from the bottom in the list of issues and priorities — above climate change, another theme in tonight’s speech, which comes in dead last at 27%.

In my column for The Week, I point out that even on these issues, Obama’s record indicates that we’ll be hearing the same old thing … with the same old results:

Once again, a “new” focus just brings up old questions. The economy has been in technical recovery since June 2009, and Obama’s economic policies have been in place since the Democrat-controlled Congress authorized an $800 billion stimulus plan in February 2009. The trajectory of the American economy has produced more inequality since then, and not less.

For instance, the civilian workforce participation rate measures the employment status of the U.S. compared to dynamic population. When Obama took office in the middle of the Great Recession meltdown, that measure stood at 65.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June 2009, at the technical end of the recession, it was still 65.7 percent. By February 2010, the point at which the White House insisted on using as a baseline for stimulus success, it had fallen to 64.9 percent, the lowest since Ronald Reagan’s fifth State of the Union speech in January 1986. Right now, that measure stands two full percentage points below that at 62.8 percent, the lowest level since Jimmy Carter’s second year in office.

And let’s not forget that the Obama administration’s biggest legislative victory — the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare — was supposed to address inequality in the health sector’s one-sixth of the economy. Instead, it has so far tossed more people out of insurance than it has provided coverage, has caused premiums to rocket upward as insurers absorb costlier enrollees, and has featured incompetence and unaccountability throughout HHS and the White House. Obama will want to separate ObamaCare from income inequality, but it’s the same effort, and highlights the lack of competence for this administration or any other to carry out this kind of reform, either legislatively or through unilateral executive action. …

How does a second-term president sell the same old reform again for the sixth year in a row, while his policy failures on reform drag down his credibility?

Expect the media to extoll the speech, but in terms of the rest of the country, Obama will be talking Greek. And after pushing the Lie of the Year 2013 since 2008, don’t expect anyone to take even that Greek too seriously.

Tags: Barack Obama, deficit, job approval, jobs, NBC/WSJ poll, sotu

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair