Obama's Got a Strong Base of Support

I was surprised to hear Chuck Todd say that Obama has a strong base of constant support--between 48-53%, despite what the Gallup daily poll says. Indeed he does. But the way you'd hear the media tell it, Obama's presidency is going down in flames. The republicans are doing their best to act like we didn't even have an election. In this video, Chuck Todd also discusses with the Morning Joe team Obama's trip to Indonesia and Australia, which has been moved from March 18 to March 21.

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Fox Poll: Obama Bests Republicans

Obamas in White House movie theater

Well hello. You'd of thought we elected a new president recently or that Obama was set to melt away. If republicans choose Mitt Romney, they're screwed. He's icky. Everyone knows that. Interesting, that people aren't gung ho for a tea party candidate either:

In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, President Obama tops each of the Republican candidates tested.

By 47 percent to 35 percent Obama bests former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The president has an even wider edge over former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (55 percent to 31 percent), and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (53 percent to 29 percent).

Finally, twice as many people say they would vote for Obama (48 percent) as would back a candidate from the Tea Party movement (23 percent). Fox News

Axelrod Talks Healthcare and Afghanistan On Morning Joe

David Axelrod always lends insight into what Obama's thinking.

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Obama Edges Back Up in Poll

How fickle are polls? Or shall I ask: how fickle are Americans? Obama's approval ratings are up again:

"President Barack Obama's job approval rating, after hitting his administration low point of 52% in the middle of last week, has edged back up, and is 56% for the latest three-day period, July 31-Aug. 2." (Gallup)

I will always be an unabashed supporter of Obama's (obviously, right?). I may not agree with everything that he does but I don't see the point in tearing him down.

Obama's Interview on Today Show July 21

I don't understand why democrats keep complaining about the health care bill. Just shut up already and get it done the way it's supposed to be done. All this talk about health care reform moving too fast is a bunch of hooey. They've had a lot of time to work on this. This is Congress' job.
The bad polls are piling up. Another one at Politico says 50% now disapprove of health care reform. What? What's going on here? While we've been mocking republicans for being fools, they've been successful fools. It appears that republicans have succeeded in derailing Obama's agenda in a record breaking six months. None of this makes sense since so many fought to get Obama into office. We all wanted health care reform. I'm just not sure what to make of all this.

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Polls Say Obama's Doing A Good Job

Obama, Biden and Iraq ambassador, Chris Hill
Gallup:

President Obama begins the second 100 days of his presidency with 56% of Americans believing he has done an excellent or good job thus far, and only 20% saying he has done a poor or terrible job. According to the new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted April 20-21, about a quarter of Americans are on the fence, saying his performance has been "just okay."

Also from Gallup, Obama is seen as making a bipartisan effort:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds Americans giving Barack Obama credit for trying to be bipartisan, but less likely to believe that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are making the same sincere efforts.

A Fox "News" poll says that 62% approve of the job Obama is doing.

Behind the Approval Rating Polls

Nate Silver, numbers whiz at 538, offers some context to the polls that are now being used to slam Obama. Critics will do whatever it takes to bring him down. That's how much they love this country. 50 days? The economy isn't fixed? Well, well.
Check out Silver's analysis here. He also notes:

A well-rounded commentary on Barack Obama popularity would take note of this context. It would also disclaim, however, that Obama's first 50 days have been anything other than typical. A typical president, 50 days or so into his term, is choosing the drapes for the Lincoln Bedroom and picking out a puppy dog -- generally unobjectionable sorts of activities. Obama has chosen to put forward nearly the entirely of his agenda. One can make the case that Obama has attempted to push his agenda further in 50 days than most Presidents do in a year. Let's take that proposition somewhat literally: what do a President's approval ratings typically look like a year or so into his term?

Poll: 68% of Americans View Obama Favorably

Hear that obstructionists, I mean, republican party.

MSNBC: After Barack Obama's first six weeks as president, the American public's attitudes about the two political parties couldn't be more different, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.

Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House.

"What is amazing here is how much political capital Obama has spent in the first six weeks," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. "And against that, he stands at the end of this six weeks with as much or more capital in the bank."

Most Americans find the republican party a bore:

Also, the public overwhelmingly believes the GOP's opposition to Obama's policies and programs is based on politics: 56 percent say they're trying to gain political advantage, versus 30 percent who say they're standing up for their principles.

Finally, Americans don't seem to have confidence in the Republican Party when it comes to the economy. By a 48-20 percent margin, they think the Democratic Party would do a better job of getting the country out of the recession.

Obama Visits Caterpillar Plant in Peoria Feb. 12

Amid sky-high polls, Obama is on a making-Washington-D.C.-aware-of-what's-going-on-in-America tour. On Feb. 12, Obama will also celebrate Lincoln's birthday at a special bash.

Swamp: President Barack Obama is not only field-testing his economic stimulus pitch in Indiana today and in Florida tomorrow - he also will see how it plays in Peoria.

On his way to Springfield, Ill., on Thursday to celebrate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Obama plans to stop in Peoria for a visit to the Caterpillar plant.

These trips are not so much a matter of explaining to people in Elkhart, Fort Myers and the like what's happening in Washington, the White House suggests, as it is a question of explaining to Washington what's happening in America - 15 percent unemployment in Elkhart, for instance.

"This is not explaining to Indiana what's going on in Washington,'' Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Elkhart today. "This is taking Washington to show them what's going on in Indiana and all over the country -- and why people are hurting....

"I think there's a myopic viewpoint in Washington,'' Gibbs said. "I think Washington needs to understand what happens in Florida, and Indiana, and Michigan, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- states that have seen huge in unemployment; 598,000 jobs -- 20,000 -- Americans lost 20,000 jobs a day last month. That's what we're highlighting.''

Obama Up 11 in Gallup Poll

Obama expands his lead from 9 to 11 and McCain goes down 1.

Electoral-Vote: A CBS poll poll of 516 uncommitted voters taken just after the event showed that 40% thought that Obama won and 26% said McCain won. On the all-important issue of the economy, Obama got a boost. Before the event 55% thought he would make the right decisions on the economy; afterwards it was 68%. McCain also gained strength, going from 41% to 48%. On the issue of who best understands the voters needs, Obama went from 59% to 80% and McCain went from 33% to 44%.

CNN also ran a poll of 675 adults and also concluded that Obama won. Here 54% said Obama performed better and 30% said McCain did. The people polled thought Obama was the more intelligent person by 57% to 25% and expressed his views more clearly 60% to 30%. In a way, these numbers are not surprising. Obama has degrees from two Ivy League schools and was president of the Harvard Law Review. McCain went to the Naval Academy and came in 894th out of 899 students in his class.

Obama Has 8 Point Lead in Polls

Obama has an 8 point lead in three polls out today. 
Here's what else: Obama is up 10 and 12 in two Virginia polls.

Obama's Lead is Steady

Poster by Derek Hess 

Obama is up 1 to 50. McCain holds at 42.

Gallup: Obama has now held a statistically significant lead over McCain for the last eight days, one shy of his campaign-best streak of nine days with a lead around the time of the Democratic National Convention. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Who the Heck is John McCain?

Frank Rich at the NYT brings us back to reality.

What do we really know about John McCain except that he was a war hero and was tortured.

He even used it as a crutch last night at Saddleback to answer questions on religion. I'm sick of hearing that he's a war hero.

I want to hear something concrete about McCain, other than his war-centric views. As far as I can see, he is a duplicate of Bush, except for the fact that he believes that global warming is real. Relative to Obama, he hasn't considered the economy.

I've broken Rich's story into the main points but you can read it all here.

The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he’s not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he’s not. He’s been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.

Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and “close the deal” with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the “foreign, exotic place” of Hawaii.

Wait for it

It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

Here it is:

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

McCain was in Vietnam. Yeah, we know that.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain is a bully.

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

Obama is in a Good Spot

The opening of a Georgia office

Obama is on vacation, working and bodysurfing, and pundits can't write about Obama, so instead, they offer tips, as if they knew. 

The WaPo says Obama needs to return to his post-partisan roots.

Newsweek says Obama needs a shot of Bill Clinton.

They're all dredging the same question: Why isn't Obama ahead in the polls?

Charles Blow at NYT says it's racism. Yes, that has a bit to do with it. Peggy Noonan says it's Obama's newness. Yes, that too. 

But overall, it's probably too early in the race. Some people just aren't paying attention. They don't know enough about Obama to make an informed choice. All they know is what they've caught in a TV ad. 

These are people who are busy working and people who don't really pay much attention to politics until it's time to vote. For everyone stalking this election, that doesn't seem possible. 

But how about this. Look how far Obama has come in such a short amount of time. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine talked about this on Face the Nation this morning. Taken from that point of view, Obama could begin sweeping the polls in a few more weeks: 

Chicago Times: Axelrod & Co. can now include in its victory list the skinny unknown from Chicago who in one short year went from a mere 26 percent in the polls to toppling front-runner Hillary Clinton who was a full 22 points ahead of him last August.

"The national numbers mean nothing," said John Kupper, the "K" in AKP&D, last week by phone. "These are not national elections but state by state elections. We have vote goals. We know prior performance models."

In other words, this is now and always has been the sum of political component parts for the Obama operation, not a national popular election but a sophisticated, incremental accumulation of delegates in the primary, and electoral votes come November.

I'd also like to point out that the polls actually look good in states where Obama isn't supposed to be ahead. Like Colorado, Virginia, Michigan. It's even tight in Florida and Ohio.
The only places where McCain is running away, are states like Alabama. But even there, Obama has halved McCain's lead.

New Gallup Poll Obama Up by 9

Barack Obama now leads John McCain among national registered voters by a 49% to 40% margin in Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted July 24-26.

What's important is the trend:

This represents a continuation of Obama's front-runner position evident in the last three Gallup Poll Daily tracking updates. The margin, coincident with the extensive U.S. news coverage of Obama's foreign tour, is the largest for Obama over McCain measured since Gallup began tracking the general election horserace in March. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Obama Leads In Latest Polls

rasmussen shows obama up by 7 points and gallup by 3, abc by 7 and newsweek by 1