Zogby: Obama down to 42% approval Rating

[Mistwell]

Source: Huffington Post

Our latest Zogby Interactive poll of 4,518 likely voters (conducted from Aug. 28-31) found 48% disapprove of Obama's job performance, and 42% approve. The big story lies behind those top-line percentages.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/obama-losing-support-amon_b_274013.html

---

Obama needs to pick a direction. Either go left and abandon the moderates and independents but firm up support on the left, or go towards the center and abandon the left while picking up support from the moderates and independents. This shuffle between the two just is not working any more. Pick one and do it well. Send a clear message, not this fuzzy one we've been getting lately.

[graywarrior]

1. Who in hell does Zogby polls anymore?

I ignore them...in fact, I DELETE them from my email.

[Captain Hilts]

4. They make no claim to be representive of voters. It's testing on how to balance

the interactive demographic with one with standard sampling.

[HopeHoops]

11. I think they get their results from Murdock, Inc. and then fake a poll to fit them.

You can do ANYTHING with poll results if you ask enough questions designed to fit your profile.

[graywarrior]

16. I despise Zogby....and I forget why.

But my despise is real.

[timeforpeace]

24. I liked Zogby when they showed Bush's low approval numbers. Now I don't like them.

[pnorman]

28. Was that intentional irony?

Or was it unintentional? We all know that Presidential elections are the bread and butter of all pollsters. They don't dare play games with THOSE numbers. But other "soft" numbers such as "popularity"? Rasmussen is known for tilting pretty heavily towards the Republican point of view with them. But Zogby? In the absence of clear evidence of bias, blindly discarding it would be sheer folly

Considering that the anti-Obama are throwing almost EVERYTHING they have against him, 43% or so ain't all that bad. He has shown himself to be FAR tougher than most have expected. I don't think he'll lose his nerve over those numbers. Nor should we either.

pnorman

[imdjh]

17. I think they are polling the hopelessly bored of the world.

I haven't been polled for anything but grocery buying habits in a coon's age. Probably because, like most people, I don't answer the phone if I don't recognize the number or if it comes in blank or strange.

Speaking of which, the ACLU is doing live telemarketing from a number that comes in as 10000000000 .

[truthisfreedom]

2. Who gives a shit?

Did bush ever give a shit? Did cheney ever give a shit?

Why should we give a shit?

[elocs]

20. The difference is that Bush and Cheney pretty much got what they wanted.

If they were in the White House now with a Republican majority in Congress the same as what the Dems now have, and they wanted health reform, it would be done. The reason we should give a shit is because of the ability of Republicans to get their programs and how feckless the current Democrats appear in comparison.

[scentopine]

27. Exactly - this bi-partisan bullshit is going to wreck health care reforn

[Bleacher Creature]

3. "Interactive"

This was the same poll that had Obama winning Arkansas last October . . .

[Cha]

5. Bullshit.

bullshit bullshit bullshit.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Not to worry, it's not a scientific sample. nt

[pnwmom]

7. Does interactive mean self-selected? If so, then it's bullshit. n/t

[high density]

8. Interactive... lol

Who is still responding to his stupid emails?

[MannyGoldstein]

9. That's what Obama gets for handing the keys to the DLC

The DLC no longer fools the Left, and the Right still hates them.

Obama needs to replace Emanuel with a Democrat, brush himself off, and start doing some real work to right the country.

[scentopine]

26. Rahm Emanuel the Center-Wing Extremist

While Obama and Emanual have been courting republicans, they will never get them to the altar. As far as money for his party and health care, Emanuel knows that democrats can never make as much difference as a trillion dollar insurance monopoly that profits by marketing and exploiting human flesh as a commodity. That's where the real money is. So, that's who he takes care of first.

Emanuel sees us as a single party centrist nation. What is a centrist?

Centrist means free market uber alles (credit to Prophet451) no matter how much it costs in terms of human suffering and abuse.

Centrist means shopping at whole foods and driving a Prius while looking past torture, past wiretaping, past immigration abuses, past wall street bonuses and insurance companies who strip mine sick people for profits. Its the idea that a night with Jon Stewart and Colbert is the same as picking up a sign and demanding a public health care option or accountability in Iraq or Wall street or CIA.

Centrist is sitting back while wall street claims it needs to spend your treasury to attract the best people, while demanding every other fking company in the country outsource manufacturing, engineering, science and yes, even medical testing to India and China.

Centrist is the quiet resignation that corporations enjoy special rights and privileges and policy making authority that ordinary citizens do not enjoy.

Centrist is demanding better US education, voting for taxes for computers in schools while corporations out spend all public school programs training people like the typical guy in Bangalore paid $7 an hour and zero benefits whose first encounter with a computer was at age 23 and will replace the graduate degree computer programmer in the US who built is first computer at age 14. Sure, the Bangalore quality sucks. But that will change since corporations will continue to stream your treasury dollars training Asia because when they get sick, they just go away or die and don't go on about it.

Centrist is blaming the unions for forcing corporations to go to Mexico or India and China or...?

Centrist is complaining about fox news and republicans while listening to NPR prattle on about cute tea parties, reading the NYTimes and then waiting 4 years and having almost nothing more to say than "at least he's better than Bush and has a nice family".

Centrist is believing that private industry, run in secret, privately accountable only to wall street, performs public services better than public government accountable to its voting citizens.

Centrist is voting for change and sitting back while a new administration is stuffed to the gills with lobbyists, corporate proxies and tycoons dedicated to fighting against change.

But perhaps the worst thing about centrists is bi-partisanship. The idea that all ideas are equal and valid - that republican lies about health care or socialism or whatever need to be taken into careful consideration and are completely legitimate in the spirit of brotherhood. That there is no need for passion, that everything is reasonable and everything merits careful deliberation. (Fuck that shit, wall street republicans are taking us for chumps - we should be marching by the million).

So we are, in America, the perfect incubator of hybrid neo-con and DLC neo-dem free market, "fuck you, I can't be bothered with torture cause I'm not being tortured" centrist politics. A new golden age of fascism where everything including your president and congress and supreme court is for sale to the highest corporate bidder.

I will admit Obama is a nice man and has a wonderful family and will not goose or molest or otherwise wedgie foreign leaders like Bush did. He's been good for international relations. As a leader for the democratic party - he is as dispassionate and as ineffective as Reid and Pelosi. Its like these people are embarrassed to be democrats or afraid or ashamed of the word "liberal".

This is a great time for a single man who accomplished much. Not a great time for the democratic party and liberal politics and substantive change in America.

I guess as Garrison Keiller has sung, we are all republ -err- centrist now.

[tiny elvis]

35. the correct word is neoliberal

much more purposeful and dangerous to society than centrist
centrism is a strategy used by neoliberals
pretending populism to obscure intention for supreme capitalism
'neoliberal' is a perfectly good and well established term
yet neoliberals pretend neoliberalism is an esoteric abstraction inapplicable to real policy
because they are reprobate confidence gamers in service of supreme capitalism

[damntexdem]

10. His approval may be dropping -- but don't trust Zogby.

Depend on something reputable.

[PM Martin]

12. I find this hard to believe.

I am sure his numbers dropped, but to go so low so fast seems unrealistic.
Obama has not handled domestic affairs in the best way, but he has not crashed and burned out.
I call B.S!

[Deja Q]

13. 4,518 people represent 300,000,000. Sure. Sounds like a real unanimous orgy to me.

(not)

[Pirate Smile]

14. Why is Huff Post pimping Zogby? Drudge and Huff Post keep getting closer and closer.

[Alhena]

15. Obama's numbers on the Daily Kos poll are the worst I can recall as well

usually that poll is huge for him.

[Warpy]

18. While I doubt this is accurate

I do see a steady progression downward among all opinion polls, probably due to Congress's dithering and then postponing action on health insurance reform.

It's just another sign of who is going to be blamed if Congress chickens out on real reform again.

[bluestateguy]

19. Thank you for today's daily fiction report

:eyes:

[Fearless]

21. See there are plenty of democrats who are "disapproving" of his slow movement on health care...

Therefore, of course his poll would be this low. The question isn't do you think he's a good president or do you think he's better than Bush or anything like that. The question is do you approve or disapprove of his job performance.

I don't know about anyone else, but myself I do disapprove of his dragging his feet on health care.

[MISSDem]

22. There seems to be a lot of whistling pass the graveyard here.

You may not like David Brooks but read this about the slide - very good information and so true. Obama needs to get in gear.

Two tides swept over American politics last winter. The first was the Obama tide. Barack Obama came into office with an impressive 70 percent approval rating. The second was the independent tide. Over the first months of this year, the number of people who called themselves either Democrats or Republicans declined, while the number who called themselves independents surged ahead.
Obama’s challenge was to push his agenda through a Democratic-controlled government while retaining the affection of the 39 percent of Americans in the middle.
The administration hasn’t been able to pull it off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/opinion/01brooks.html?hp

[No Elephants]

32. I don't like David Brooks bc he is intellectually dishonest. That article is no exception.

It does not contain good info. It takes one poll, which may be an outlier to begin with, treats it as gospel and then spins the hell out of the numbers.

Obama's numbers have slipped. No question there. Whether they have slipped as much as Zogby claims is another issue. I doubt it. But, even assuming the numbers have slipped, David Brooks "explanation" of why they have slipped is his very biased opinion. Brooks makes his living spinning things to a conservative viewpoint/audience.

Brooks' spin no more valid or "true" than Rachael Maddow's opinion on that subject. In fact, I'd trust Maddow's more because she strikes me as more intellectually honest than Brooks by far, even though I recognize that each of them has a bias.

IMO, people are frustrated with the economy and other disasters to which thirty years of Reagan and neocon PNAC policies lead us and they are blaming that on Obama because he is the only show in the Oval Office right now. Brooks would never say that, even if he were capable of recognizing it.

[MISSDem]

36. Actually, David Brooks seems to really respect President Obama

and like him. He seems very honest to me whenever I read or hear him. I always think of William Raspberry when these situations occur and I seem to agree with the "other side". Mr. Raspberry said something like 'sometimes we can learn from the other side and sometimes we will agree with the other side'.

[Doctor_J]

23. We need to start dealing with hate radio more aggressively

or this will continue.

[Fearless]

29. And the town hall meetings... it's just embarrassing.

[No Elephants]

33. No way to do that unless and until we get a few thousand Ed Schultz's on the airwaves around

the nation.

That, IMO, would take different ownership of the stations. No rich Democrats seem to be stepping up for their positions the way Murdoch did for his. And don't say there are no rich Democrats. There are enough to do this, if they choose.

[scarface2004]

25. i don t think so!

should just say down to 2% and be done with it!

[flyarm]

30. I was contacted by Zogby last week asking me if i would do polls emailed to me

I used to do them in 2004 and now they contacted me by phone and were very nice and asked me if i would do it again..I said yes.

[TankLV]

31. and obama only has HIMSELF to blame!!!

I'm one of the ones who's VERY DISALLUSIONED...

[sabrina 1]

34. Me too, very disappointed

We had a majority in all three branches of government, he had a huge approval rating, the Repubs were all but dead as a party AND an overwhelming majority of the public WANTS healthcare reform.

He didn't need Republicans to get it done, he needed to have a conversation with Reid and Nancy about removing Committee Chairmanships from Blue Dogs and other Repubs posing as Dems.

He had more political capital than any president, including Bush, in my memory, and right now, it looks like he's blowing it.

The reason imo is, he dislikes the left, the very people who worked to put in him power. He chose Rahm Emmanuel who would probably bite off his nose to spite his face if it came to even recognizing those he views as 'left'. That was a big mistake. It was NOT Rahm Emmanuel who got him elected.

I would call myself an Independent now so they can count me among those he needs badly to win over unless he doesn't care about doing what Clinton did, lose his majority in both houses.

I can't believe they are blowing this. Can you imagine what Republicans would have accomplished with those numbers? It's just mind-boggling.

[VPStoltz]

37. Again, it's all in the way the question is worded - or not.

I LOVES me some President Obama - Love, love, love.
Just seeing pictures of him and his family still brings a tear to my eye.
However, I DO NOT approve of the way he is handling the health care debate, nor did I like the way he handle the aftermath of the banking debacle.
Do I approve of him as President 100% but on handling these issue, not so much.

[MISSDem]

38. That makes no sense. How can you approve of him 100% as President but

not approve of what he is doing while being President? Either he ends these wars or I won't vote for him if he runs again.

[PHIMG]

39. Bullshit

This left-right-center thing is so plaid out and dumb. I'm sick of people using Polisci 101 terms to distill National Politics to the lowest common denominator.

The real battle is INSIDE THE BELTWAY vs PROGRESSIVE POPULISM.

Meaning does he say fuck you to people who live in the DC word where Bipartisanship is the goal instead of reform?

Does say yes to the people who know that any Democratic president who lets people by into Medicare will get a huge amount of support?

This idea that you can satisfy "the left" only at the cost of losing the "middle" is bullshit. 70% want the public option. 70% means you have "the left", the "middle", the reasonable righties, all but the dead enders who think Obama is the antichrist.

Let's not repeat right-wing talking points.

Obama can make his base happy and increase his appeal with the middle and I think he will do this in the end!

[Vidar]

40. I remember back in 2004 when Zogby was new & we all though him to be

the most accurate. OOPS!