The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[pbrower2a]

I'm not quite sure I buy a couple of those polls. (Namely Minnesota and Virginia. Especially Virginia.)

I show what I see and don't judge the poll unless it is somehow suspect, as in "Who are those guys?"

[pbrower2a]

Rasmussen:

Approve 49%
Disapprove 51%

=o

This is funny they probably added all the undecided to the disapprove. Look at these two polls and compare it to Rasmussen.

Gallup

Approve 56%   
Dissaprove 39%

FOX News

Approve 54%
Disaprove 38%   

Rasmussen is likely voters. The others are all adults.

Rasmussen's "likely voters" screen grossly underestimates the youngest voters. Young voters were strongly Democratic and voted at an unusually-high volume  for youth voters in 2008. Some of Rasmussen's "likely voters" won't vote in 2012 (largely-older voters due to death or senescence); Rasmussen's "likely voters" fails to include voters born between 1990 and 1994.

[pbrower2a]

There is nothing Republican about trying to figure out who will actually vote.

It's simply impossible to predict which current 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds will vote three years from now. Rasmussen does not try; it is thus safe to look at a Rasmussen poll as a floor (for Democrats) that will likely rise as Election Day approaches.

If Rasmussen had been polling in 1980 or 1984 with the same methodology, then his firm would have greatly underestimated Reagan victories.

[pbrower2a]

There is nothing Republican about trying to figure out who will actually vote.

It's simply impossible to predict which current 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds will vote three years from now. Rasmussen does not try; it is thus safe to look at a Rasmussen poll as a floor (for Democrats) that will likely rise as Election Day approaches.

If Rasmussen had been polling in 1980 or 1984 with the same methodology, then his firm would have greatly underestimated Reagan victories.

Dude, I hope you know that no polling firm tries to predict how 15 and 16 year olds will vote.

I have seen little evidence of such youth going R when they vote in 2012. If one tries to predict how an election will go four years out, then you need to know what the demographic trends are.

Of course those trends do not show what the general perception of Obama will be in 2012; if he proves corrupt, inept, or otherwise disreputable then no well-tuned campaign machine can rescue him. But if things are reasonably good for him -- if nothing changes but demographics -- then the best scenario for the Republicans is that Obama picks up Missouri, Arizona, and maybe Montana or Georgia. So he pleases the people who voted for him and gets a little gain from the youth vote, and the best that the GOP can hope for rescuing as many electoral votes as possible is Huckabee versus Obama, and Obama wins.

(Romney probably does better with popular votes,  cutting some of the gigantic margins by which Obama won in 2008 in the Blue Firewall, but not enough to swing any state except perhaps Indiana. Romney has no obvious appeal in the South, and might lose a couple states as many poor-white votes hemorrhage away from McCain's margins. That's before I even talk about Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich.)

I make this prediction of the votes of persons now 14 to 18 who were too young to vote on the material of  Neil Howe and the late William Strauss in their Generations and Fourth Turning theories which so far have explained how youth will vote -- and how they have voted since the 1930s. They could explain the huge margins for FDR... and Ronald Reagan.  Current young adults, according to these theories, have political attitudes similar in many ways to the GI Generation of World War II veterans -- and in the 1930s that generation was the most politically-liberal in American history. It was too rational to fall for "Vote this way lest the Devil take you!); even if it was religious it went for such types as Billy Graham or Fulton Sheen  who kept the message optimistic and rational.

Such is much in contrast to the Lost Generation born late in the 19th century who voted heavily for Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and Generation X, who amazed the rest of America with their support for Ronald Reagan -- youth already suspicious of everything other than commerce, youth who thought that so long as the Right People wielded the power and managed the wealth, all would be well. 

What can overcome this?

1. An incredibly-strong, charismatic GOP nominee who has no regional weaknesses (Reagan) or who has a record of military heroism as a leader (Eisenhower). A technocrat who seems to have no feelings will remind people of what is worst with the GOP.

Problem #1 for the GOP: Barack Obama has much the same repertory of political skills as Ronald Reagan.

Problem #2: should General Petraeus get a pair of glorious victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, then he solves the mess that Dubya left behind to the political advantage of Obama in 2012 and even if he takes the role of Dwight Eisenhower, he does so in 2016, when the 22nd Amendment likely retires Obama.

2. Catastrophic failure by Obama as President. A recession giving way to a shaky recovery that ends in a 1929-style Crash would be the economic disaster that leads to political failure, and I will leave diplomatic and military calamities with similar effect to your imagination.

Problem: We are all up a filthy creek (we all know its metaphoric name) with no paddle, so to speak.

You cannot assume that the Religious Right will reshape American political values in time for 2012; it relied heavily upon Baby Boomers, and their kids flee it at the first chance. Taxing and government spending will of course offend the Corporate base of the GOP, but those will matter little to voters so long as those seem to bring higher pay and better lives. Face it: if you get a government job do you care about the taxes that fund your job and make the difference between going hungry and having some semblance of middle-class norms of life?

Nothing can redeem the record of our disgraced 43rd President.  Democrats will bring that record up as often as they think necessary in 2012 as in 2008, and any GOP nominee will need to distance himself from him. Republicans from a time before Dubya will be too old (Dubya will be 66 in 2012) to appeal with nostalgia for 'better times'; younger Republicans who have no ties to Dubya have yet to have careers advanced enough to be serious nationwide candidates... or (Collins or Snowe in Maine, maybe Murkowski in Alaska) might as well be Democrats.

I remember one ad campaign by the Reagan candidacy from 1984: "I Remember You",  a scathing presentation of Mondale/Ferraro as an attempt to return to the old liberal habits of Jimmy Carter and their consequences (gas lines, high unemployment, hostage-taking in Iran).  I can imagine a campaign that morphs any GOP nominee into George W. Bush:

"He believes in ravaging the environment to get quick profits for his buddies...

He believes in tax breaks for the super-rich that will do you no good...

He believes in keeping wages low...

He believes in forcing creationism in schools...

He believes in outsourcing American jobs...

He believes that the current (or former) way of health care is just fine...

JUST LIKE GEORGE W. BUSH

or, in a twist on "I remember you"...

business failures, corruption scandals, "Mission Accomplished!", massive job losses, people abandoning or being foreclosed from houses, personal debt outpacing personal income...

Obama proved a masterful campaigner in 2012, and even if he can't do appreciable overt campaigning, he has a formidable campaign machine that he can restart at the right time.

[pbrower2a]

Current young adults -- and current juveniles --  will eventually have more cause to vote for conservative pols. What Howe and Strauss call the Millennial Generation (born largely in the last two decades of the 20th century) are more liberal than the older Generation X (born largely in the 1960s and 1970s) when one controls for region, ethnicity, military experience, income, social class, education, job title, and the like. Generation X tended to be conservative even if it had cr@ppy jobs because it still had faith in Corporate America to either make things right or had (often) inordinate faith in their own abilities as survivors. The Millennial Generation saw Generation X treated badly even when it showed competence and dedication.

The Millennial Generation so far has little stake in the economic status quo. They have not entered elite positions in industry. If they have started businesses, then those businesses are at the stage in which owners think more about getting income than from protecting it from taxes or demands of unrelated employees.  Few have started fast-track careers in such lucrative professions as medicine, dentistry, or law. Although they are no more religious than Generation X they are hostile to irrationality in religion. When they get more of a stake in the system they will have more cause for political and economic conservatism -- but so far any faith in top-down management, trickle-down economics, will take huge leaps of faith that few people have.  

One thing will push Millennial adults toward cultural conservatism -- their children... teen-age children, that is. Not until at least 2016 will that be a big issue for them, as their children are largely infants, toddlers, or elementary-school pupils -- early, that is. Note well that the economic hardships of recent years have delayed many marriages and much child-bearing, so that may slow that trend toward cultural conservatism (few want their children to grow up as savages and incompetent sure-losers). Then some might be more amenable to the "school prayer" pushers and the like who offer in-school devotions in school as the only reliable protection against juvenile delinquency.

Should Barack Obama and his Democratic politicians be as successful as those of FDR (which is pushing the envelope as prophecy) in reshaping American economic and political life, then the consensus among the Millennial Generation will likely divide between those who think that things have gone too far, about enough, and not far enough. Such will redefine the left/center/right paradigms of American politics. Undoing something like national health care or free education through graduate school for those who can legitimately use it will be difficult.  America could seem more like a European country in its politics than it does now -- but note well that all democratic societies in Europe have conservative parties.

It is possible that the GOP will lose its political relevance as did the Federalists and Whigs-- but a single-Party system would be unwieldy here. Should the GOP disappear due to its irrelevance or become a fringe party, then the Democratic Party would likely split into such groupings (and they will be known as Parties) as Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.   
 

  

[pbrower2a]

You are talking about 15-16 year olds? They are very democratic.

Somewhat true, but a lot of teens are only democrat because Obama was running. Most teens don't know what the difference between a Republican and  a Democrat. I think the GOP needs to show teens the principles of the party.

Here's how most teens figure politics:
George Bush = Bad = Republican
Obama = God = Democrat

So most teens think since they like Obama then they are a democrat. When they mature, they will figure it out and become more conservative.

Very true. These teens will only know a country controlled by Democrats, so any mistakes will make the Democrats look bad in their eyes.

In fact they know what a Republican administration and a stooge GOP Congress could do in America -- and it wasn't pretty. They remember the Religious Right, and they run from it. Until the GOP can prove itself unconnected to our 43rd President and his amoral, incompetent, alienating leadership, the GOP is in big trouble with people born between 1980 and at least 1994. If the GOP should take the very low road of male chauvinism, homophobia, and racism, then such a road is one to ruin. Ronald Reagan exuded optimism and always had an agenda, and he could always cut a deal to get what he most wanted.

Someone born in 1994 can't avoid knowing about the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. Eleven-year-olds are aware of unsubtle events -- wars and natural disasters. Someone born that late can't  know any GOP President other than George W. Bush, and that is a very bad memory. Dubya's father at the least got some dramatic events abroad to go the way almost everyone wanted them to go. Ronald Reagan may have been a mixed bag as a political leader. That happened before the youngest voters of 2012 were born, and it happened while the youngest voters of 2008 were literal infants.

Like the generational approach or not, you must recognize that time itself is environment. People would have to be born no earlier than the early 1980s to remember Republican leadership doing anything positive. Time is environment; it shapes attitudes arguably as much as religion, ethnicity, region, and class.

I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan (and indeed JFK!), but as a liberal I was prone to underestimating him as a leader. If you can accept this model for the difference between Reagan and Carter:

Carter    = inept and irrelevant       = Democrat
Reagan  = effective and convincing = Republican

then this so far seems to work:

GW Bush = incompetent, glory-seeking = Republican
Obama    = effective and principled       = Democrat

Can Obama fail? Sure. His judgment could prove faulty, and his liberalism can conceivably go too far. He could be the recipient of some incredible misfortune. That said, his personality seems right for the role, and he gets much leeway after a bad President. Right now it seems just as likely that Obama will win re-election in an Eisenhower-style landslide or be defeated.
Take 100 electoral votes from Obama's 2008 victory and he ends up with 265 EV and a loss; add 100 and he ends up with 465 EV and a huge landslide.



 

[pbrower2a]

pbrower is in fantasyland.  A lot of Dems are.

Comparing Obama in 2012 to Reagan in 1984?

Reagan's "morning in America" campaign worked because the economy was growing.  If he had said it was morning in America and unemploymnet had been at 12%, people would have thought he had a screw loose.  Reagan won because he ran on his record.

We are likely to have a slow recovery. The easy gains from real estate speculation and from predatory or destructive activities (subprime lending, export of jobs) are no longer available. Obama will be unable to impose some economic magic that cuts unemployment levels to the point that inflation becomes a genuine threat, as he does not have command of the economy.

Any recovery in America is going to depend upon import substitution, formation of small businesses, and the likely recovery of industries that have recently had hard times (like the auto industry). Much of this will happen without him doing anything, and he will derive political gain from it.    

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This is the nastiest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But note well that much of the Great Depression was a recovery from the worst effects of the catastrophic crash.  Even a depression offers opportunities -- so long as people look to the long term and make commitments to underperforming activities (by recent standards) more likely to enrich progeny than to enrich founders. High unemployment ensures that plenty of competent people are able to take on new jobs in start-up activities. Raw materials, equipment, and real estate are available cheaply. Lenders have capital to lend. The 1930s may have been the best time ever for starting a business; consider that something so "normal" in life as the supermarket came into existence then.    

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Which may include staying out of the way of necessary change, and keeping the corruption  and cronyism that Dubya fell for out of the federal government. Government activity must be effective and economical; it must create wealth (think of highway projects, conservation, retrofitting buildings for savings of energy, and the like). Even defense spending can be part of the mix; a nutty dictator in North Korea who makes Leonid Brezhnev look like a paragon of decency, caution, and reason may force us into the SDI program that Reagan wanted.

So far I consider it blasphemous to compare Obama to FDR -- but Obama knows his US history. Note well that FDR won a huge landslide victory in 1936 even though the economy had yet recovered the 1929 level of prosperity -- but enough people seemed to believe that America was headed in the right direction.

That will be enough in 2012 to win, if not in a spectacular landslide.    

[pbrower2a]

Things are completely different than they were in the 1930's.  In the 1930's, there wasnt a 24 hour newmedia that picked at every little thing FDR did.  There also wasnt the need for instant gratification that people seem to have today.  People increasingly expect things to turn around fast and if they dont, those in power are in a lot of trouble no matter who they preceeded. 

Nobody questions that the news media are different in technology and public reach. FoX Propaganda Channel  and Rush Limbaugh can carp at  Obama 24/7, and like-minded people can share their conspiracy stories about Barack Obama at Free Republic (that he is the Antichrist, that he is the new Hitler, etc.) We have e-mail which allows our friends, relatives, and business associates to reach us with the horror tale of the day which may include a forged screed against Obama or even a faked photograph. How long will it be before someone sends out a forged image of Barack Obama fornicating with a pretty white girl in the Oval office? But that said, we have left wing media as well, not all from established news sources. MSNBC has Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow  attacking right-wing politicians who go too far. There's also the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos. People gravitate to what they like.    

Times are also different from about five years ago. The public mood has changed drastically. We have less tolerance for mediocre, let alone perverse, efforts. George W. Bush could be re-elected, with a little help of his friends (like Kenneth Blackwell) despite his mediocrity or worse as a President. Obama cannot get away with such, and it is just as well.  

And ten. Bill Clinton was not one of our best President; a trimmer, he rode trends. He was the most popular President who accomplished little for decades.  He began as a populist and became a "moderate".  Sure, he got budget surpluses, which is far better than what followed, but that resulted from budgetary gridlock that kept both he and the GOP-dominated Congress from achieving the spending priorities that either wanted.

Or twenty. That's when Communist rule in central and southeastern Europe was in mortal collapse. That's when Poland started having free elections and when Hungary, having  stripped the barbed wire at the Austrian border, became a favorite vacation spot for East Germans who found that they could cross into Austria on a circuitous trip around the internal German borders.

Or thirty, which is when our long-time Iran soured on us, and when Jimmy Carter rode the existing trends of liberalism into identity politics to one of the most smashing defeats by a challenger in American history.  That's about when the electronic media began to resemble what we now have, with 24/7 news coverage.

Or forty, when Nixon was as newly elected as President as Obama is now. Those times are very different from what we know now. The youth-adult generation gap was getting ugly; adults who had something to protect became reactionary. Boomer youth left the idea that they would love to live in a world like the set of Hair and that they had nothing but contempt for institutions that largely worked well.

Need I go on?

The young-adult voters of 2008 trend strongly liberal and Democratic; the younger that they were, the more Democratic they were. The new voters of 2012 have consistently shown themselves much the same. They have heard their parents cursing Big Business for treating people badly -- pushing pay down and offering no semblance of economic security even when things go well. They have seen an unjust bubble in real estate collapse with even-more-severe injustice. They know Dubya as a liar and poseur who shows loyalty only to his financial supporters and to people who "deliver votes". They were taught in school to expect better -- and they have seen a travesty. Such is the culture of our youth. About all that they endorse about capitalism is its productivity and the consumer choice that it allows.

Those are not bad kids. They are not cynical and opportunistic; they are smart and rational. They seem to reject the Religious Right, the only large group that has had any success in convincing people that economic hardships on behalf or rapacious elites are the necessary Will of God. Unlike the "Flower Power" kids of the 1960s they are more likely to convince their parents than to offend them. They have a good work ethic and want to be treated fairly. A society that cheats them out of the Good Life solely to enrich entrenched elites will throw away their virtues -- but one that gives an honest day's pay for an honest days' work and a stake in the system will get very good results. A society that must look for long-term results absolutely must offer rewards that encourage people to stick around, develop skills, and get things done.

Demographics alone suggest that the GOP is in for political hard times for the next few years. The GOP cannot remake itself quickly enough to adapt to the political values of young voters. If things go well, Democrats get the credit; if things go badly, then Republicans get the blame.  To be sure, current young voters will become more politically conservative when they have a stake in the economic system -- when many start having lucrative professions, when some of their start-up businesses turn profitable enough that they are as concerned about keeping their income as they are in earning revenue (taxes and unions becoming threats to profits), and when they start entering management in big corporations. They will become more culturally conservative as their kids enter adolescence -- which has yet to happen -- and start going away from what Mom and Dad want.

If the GOP is to make any political gains between now and 2012, then they will have to come from voters over age 35 or so.  That will be difficult. The GOP has been going more to the Right even as America seems to run from it.  How can the GOP win back enough voters from among people over 35? Your guess is as good as mine.

    

  

[pbrower2a]

We are likely to have a slow recovery. The easy gains from real estate speculation and from predatory or destructive activities (subprime lending, export of jobs) are no longer available. Obama will be unable to impose some economic magic that cuts unemployment levels to the point that inflation becomes a genuine threat, as he does not have command of the economy.

Silly Keynesian, inflation is a monetary phenomenon.  Inflation can occur even without meaningful growth (See: Zimbabwe).

Silly deflationist, deflation is also a monetary phenomenon. It always results in extreme hardship for any debtor. The Bush Administration and Big Business pushed debt as a surrogate for income, and deflation would make things far worse. Even we Americans have our limits of tolerance for personal ruin and for economic subjection.

And you are right that the recovery will be slow.  It will take up the lions share of this decade, I'm afraid.  That is one of the main reasons I do not see Obama being re-elected: Recovery will not be obvious enough fast enough.

Much as in the 1930s. Reality has set in, and nobody reasonably expects a return to the speculative binge that created the illusory prosperity of the 1920s this decade.

Nor are Obama's programs likely to make things better.

What did the GOP have to offer? Lower wages, tax cuts directed at the super-rich, big cuts in government spending except on defense, subsidies to the well-connected? Deflation to more thoroughly ruin those who had borrowed money for college loans to keep kids from becoming paupers?

Right-wingers are just lucky that the US doesn't have  a strong socialist movement. 

Any recovery in America is going to depend upon import substitution, formation of small businesses, and the likely recovery of industries that have recently had hard times (like the auto industry). Much of this will happen without him doing anything, and he will derive political gain from it.

I agree that growth will need to be driven by small businesses.  But you can't grow small businesses by raising taxes on small businesses or by mandating employer helath coverage.

Small businesses cannot afford to insure their employees because their small workforces give them little pricing power.

Most countries rely upon sales taxes to support their healthcare system. The US makes employees veritable hostages of their employers who offer health insurance out of some supposed pangs of charity.  Whether one buys an all-you-can-eat  buffet meal at some restaurant that pays its employees little or retains a high-priced law firm such a healthcare system ensures that because one has work one can get medical care.

Obama's promised tax increase on the rich is actually a tax increase on small businesses.  Small businesses pay what's called pass through taxation.  That menas taxes are not levied directly on the business' profits, but rather on the income the owner earns from his business.  Tax increases on the top marignal rate hit small businesses primarily, a fact that is apparently not known by the White House.  50% of the top 5% are small business owners and 75% of the top 1% are small business owners.  The owner recieves his share of the profits and pays income tax on his share.  This is how small businesses are taxed.

Most of the small businesses that you describe seem to be professional practices and large family farms -- not the mom-and-pop business struggling for survival on minuscule earnings.

Government activity must be effective and economical; it must create wealth (think of highway projects, conservation, retrofitting buildings for savings of energy, and the like).

When Obama starts building highways, be sure to notify me.

Government may retrofit its own buildings, but this is a tiny protion of our energy consumption.  If we end up saving money by retrofitting buildings, it will be because individuals and businesses chose to do it, not government.

Tax breaks. People got tax breaks for installing new windows with better insulation. 

So far I consider it blasphemous to compare Obama to FDR -- but Obama knows his US history. Note well that FDR won a huge landslide victory in 1936 even though the economy had yet recovered the 1929 level of prosperity -- but enough people seemed to believe that America was headed in the right direction.

That will be enough in 2012 to win, if not in a spectacular landslide.

Look at the actual data from FDRs first term.  There is a startling rapid improvement in every meaningful stat.  Where do people get this idea that FDR got re-elected without serious recovery?

Division of a small number by a much smaller number gets a big number. If a country like Burma or Laos ever gets its economic act together then it could easily have a spectacular growth rate. FDR had a huge growth rate for the economy because the 1929-1932 meltdown had utterly ravaged the US economy.

This gives some idea of how badly the valuations of common stock went in 1929, 1973, 2000, and 2007:



I can't tell you whether the current improvement is the start of something big -- or a suckers' rally (the 1929-1933 meltdown had one that looks much like the current gain in stock values)... but we seem to be in better shape than we were in a couple moths ago.

Don't fool yourself; the 2007-2009 Bad Bear followed the decline curve of the 1929-1933 bear for a couple of months, even going below in some weeks. This is a really bad one, and everyone knows it.

[pbrower2a]

We are likely to have a slow recovery. The easy gains from real estate speculation and from predatory or destructive activities (subprime lending, export of jobs) are no longer available. Obama will be unable to impose some economic magic that cuts unemployment levels to the point that inflation becomes a genuine threat, as he does not have command of the economy.

Silly Keynesian, inflation is a monetary phenomenon.  Inflation can occur even without meaningful growth (See: Zimbabwe).

Silly deflationist, deflation is also a monetary phenomenon. It always results in extreme hardship for any debtor. The Bush Administration and Big Business pushed debt as a surrogate for income, and deflation would make things far worse. Even we Americans have our limits of tolerance for personal ruin and for economic subjection.

What I'm telling you is not that deflation is good.  I don't know how you got that idea.

What I am telling you is that:
a) The Fed should be tasked with handling the recovery because only they have the tools and expertise to control price level
b) The stimulus ties the Fed's hands by forcing them to monetize more debt than they want to and
c) If you force the Fed to monetize more debt than they want to you can get inflation without growth

a) I agree.

b) If the debt results from government spending in an under-heated economy, then such is simply arithmetic. The debt may do no obvious immediate good -- let us say, that it pays off foreign creditors  -- in which it "simply" realizes the worthlessness of what we borrowed for. Going heavily into debt to keep up appearances or to go on spending binges has always been bad economy for a person -- and a people. 

c) You are discussing destructive inflation -- the sort that makes a mockery of thrift. The government $crews its creditors -- bond-holders -- through a repudiation of debt in all but name. Assets go into inflation-dodges, and people think only of the short term. Savings accounts, government and industry bonds,  and insurance policies (the usual means of financing long-term investments) lose their value or become extremely unpopular. People with money to lend do what they can to lend outside their economy.   But John Maynard Keynes  explained that situation very well, too, and he offered an obvious solution: raise taxes, cut spending, and shrink the money supply.

It is unwise to confuse fiscal policy and monetary policy. Government spending does not itself create inflation -- so long as the government is able to cut consumption (the least of our problems right now, thank you).

The quantity theory of money, prices, and exchange is a basic equation of economics:

   MV  = PT

M is the money supply, V is the velocity of money, P is the price level (not an inflation rate!), and T is the real value of transactions. It's easy to believe that V and T are fixed -- but toward the Keynesian "liquidity trap" (people are hoarding cash because they dare not take any risks of consuming more than the bare minimum), an increase in the money supply might be completely ineffective in getting people to spend more because PT is fixed and the velocity of money shrinks to accommodate the increased amount of money in hoards.  With an overheated economy an increase of the money supply leads to a similar increase in the price level (a/k/a inflation); thus a 5% increase in the money supply leads to roughly a 5% increase in the price level. When the money-issuing authority goes wild with the printing press, things really go bad -- current Zimbabwe, Germany in the 1920s, China and Hungary in the late 1940s.  Because creditors are the most reliable conservers of wealth, such inflation implies big trouble.

Zero inflation is an impossible goal if one wants to reduce unemployment, but even worse than a minuscule amount of inflation is the effort needed to achieve it. 

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Shoulda let the Fed do its job, guys.
[/quote]

Monetary policy can precipitate economic collapses, but no evidence exists that it can get a nation out of a depression or even a recession.

[pbrower2a]

New poll in Arizona:

It replaces an old one, and nothing really changes. It's Rasmussen's "likely voters" screen which likely underestimates younger potential voters. 

[pbrower2a]

CBS News

Approve 58%
Disapprove 30%

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/29/opinion/polls/main5196563.shtml

Ugh
Polls like these and Rasmussen mess up the average.

Average them and you get something impressive nationally for Obama (54-44 or the like).  The strong disapproval ratings suggest that America itself is as polarized late in July 2009 as it was in November 2008, suggesting that those who thought him a very poor choice in November 2008 still think him such.

[pbrower2a]

New polls in California:

"Adults" would give a borderline "7", and the other two average 60% one for Registered Voters and one for "Likely Voters", whatever the latter is.

[pbrower2a]

But the Dems seem to have selective outrage. It's okay to mock Bush, but not okay to mock Obama.

Mockery of George W. Bush began early when many questioned whether he had been elected fair-and-square. That faded on 9/11. It began anew as reports emerged that the basis of the invasion of Iraq was specious, and intensified after the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Anyone who fouls up as badly as Dubya did, and not only for holding the "wrong" ideology, deserves mockery. But even the great ones (except perhaps Washington) get mockery. Lincoln did, and FDR did.  

Question: is the mockery valid?
 

[pbrower2a]

But the Dems seem to have selective outrage. It's okay to mock Bush, but not okay to mock Obama.

Mockery of George W. Bush began early when many questioned whether he had been elected fair-and-square. That faded on 9/11. It began anew as reports emerged that the basis of the invasion of Iraq was specious, and intensified after the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Anyone who fouls up as badly as Dubya did, and not only for holding the "wrong" ideology, deserves mockery. But even the great ones (except perhaps Washington) get mockery. Lincoln did, and FDR did.  

Question: is the mockery valid?
 

By this standard, it would be okay to mock Obama for botching his swearing in. I can only imagine what it would have been like if Bush had done that.

It's the Chief Justice who choked -- not Barack Obama.

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?

... I figure that President Obama had a retake done in some back office to make the swearing-in official in the event of some embarrassing questions.

I'm surprised that some have yet to question the legitimacy of our President because of the botching of the Oath of Office.

[pbrower2a]

I'm tired of hearing democrats whine, If your going tobeat the s*** out of our president when he's in office, then we "Right WINGZ MORALFAGS, TERROSIRTZZZZ" have the same right to do to your president.


First with Conservatives being a threat ot HLS, Now GOPhers hiring mobs to make Specter, Sebelius and other democrats cry.

I mean, Come on. I know osme one will say that the GOP is no better with the stupid birther thing. It's BS

But guess what, I'm one of those 42% of GOPhers who think Obama was born in America.

I'd like to see the GOP drop the Astroturf politics of setting up pseudo-populist right-wing activity (made to look grass-roots but choreographed as rigidly as a Busby Berkeley dance number) and disrupting Town Hall meetings. If you are from Kalamazoo and you are in a town hall meeting for the Congressional representative for greater South Bend-Elkhart, at least be polite. There is an appropriate time and place for debating who should be President, and that ended on November 4 and January 20, depending on your taste.

Of course the "Obama isn't a real American" meme must.... die. We are stuck with him, and if his efforts are honest and his message coherent, then such is an improvement over what preceded him. He won the President fair, square, and decisively despite all sorts of personal attributes that don't ordinarily go with the Presidency. He looks little like any prior President, he has an uncharacteristic name for a President, and he has had an unusually-swift tise to power.

I have big problems with some of the activities of those who show disrespect for Members of Congress and by allusion to those who voted for them. 

You are welcome to believe whatever you want about whether the GOP endorses such tactics, opposes them, or treats them as something to disavow or exploit as is convenient:

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/balance_of_power/2009/08/steele-on-protesters-dont-look.html

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[pbrower2a]

One state changes in the absence of a large battery of recent statewide polls, if not a big change, but the state in question (Virginia) is as critical as they get:

[pbrower2a]

Gallup just released 50 states, but they are from January-June polling so I have no idea what to make of it. Pretty much meaningless numbers.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/122165/Obama-Approval-Highest-D.C.-Hawaii-Vermont.aspx

I concur, so I won't make any map about these. Polls from January to June might be rich in data but they would also be obsolete.

[pbrower2a]

Only two states (Missouri and Montana) would go to Obama in 2012,  solely due to the marginal effects of the Age Wave (that young voters are more liberal-leaning than the general public, and that the group of young voters who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 will have expanded from ages 18-30 to 18-34 in 2012,  if nothing else changes. Note that those are marginal effects. Young voters remain decidedly Democratic, and any shift of them to the Republican nominee will require strong counteraction of the Age Wave. 41 electoral votes will not be enough to change the nature of the 2012 election; the Republicans will have to pick up about 75 electoral votes to make things close (which would include IN, NC, and NE-02, and  FL and OH as well) -- and that the Republicans would have to more than undo the Age Effect.

My expression of this topic in the form of a map:

 

Explanation                                                                                                    EV Cumulative

Reddish-black: "Metropolitan America" -- Fuhgeddaboudit.                          209  209
Deep Red: "Suburban America" -- Obama must absolutely win all of these.  55   264
Red: Obama victory zone: OH, FL, or two of CO, NV, and VA                          74  338 
Pink: Age Wave Obama wins, 2008 (NC, IN, NE-02)                                    27 365

The Age Wave alone strengthens all 2008 wins for Obama in 2012.

Dark  orange : Obama wins, 2012 (MO, MT)                                                   14  379 

Anything beyond this will require something other than the effect of the Age Wave in politics

Beige: Arizona  (reversal of Favorite Son effect, 2008-2012):                        10   389

Anything beyond this requires political changes that I cannot yet predict, but that I can't rule out, either. In arbitrary order of likelihood:

Pale green: Clinton-but-not-Obama states "return"                                     38   437
Dark green: racially-polarized Deep South                                                  39   466
Pale blue:  Small-but-unlikely gains, Upper Plains                                         7   473
Medium blue: Texas                                                                                       34   507

Beyond this, Obama wins are all but impossible:


Deep blue: No way!                                                                                       31   538
                     

I am playing loose with one category: Clinton won Louisiana twice but never won South Carolina. South Carolina was much closer than Louisiana in 2008. The Age Wave is weak in the Dakotas.

----

This map shows how Obama can win in 2012 -- or lose. It's clear that Obama has no way of losing anything in reddish-black, just as he has no reasonable expectation of winning anything in the bluish-black. The second-darkest shade of red (really a reddish-brown) shows some slight evidence of shakiness, like having voted for a Republican nominee for President once or having been really close to doing so in 2000 or 2004. In a 50-50 race these all go to Obama. Should Obama lose any state in this reddish-brown group. he loses.

The medium red includes the legitimate swing states of a 50-50 contest in 2012. Those include Nevada, which went for Obama by a huge margin -- but late. Nevada may be joining the Blue Firewall, but one election does not show that. Should the Republicans win all of these or lose only Nevada it will win in 2012. Colorado? Virginia? Such depends upon the apportionment of House seats, and those in the red-brown and red-black categories will lose lots of seats due to relative losses of population. The GOP absolutely must win Florida and Ohio and can't lose two of the other states in this category and expect to win. Virginia may be enough for Obama to win even if he wins only it; I will have a more definitive answer after the 2010 Census.

Pink? Obama won these  by slight margins. No Democratic nominee for President had ever won Indiana or anything in Nebraska since 1964 (also true of Virginia, but Virginia was no squeaker).  Obama won their 27 electoral votes because of young voters (other explanations are possible -- Latinos, Hispanics, GLBT populations).

The Age Wave -- that younger voters are much more Democratic-leaning  than their elders, and that the new voters of 2012 are likely to be no less liberal -- should solidify Obama's wins even in the "pink" group. Such will be enough to flip only two states in 2012: Missouri and Montana, which will be little more than enough to offset losses of electoral votes in dark-red and medium-red categories.

Picking up everything in red or orange will indicate that Obama has gained no support between 2008 and 2012 except through demographic change. That's still a decisive victory.

Arizona? Unless Senator John Kyl (R, AZ)  becomes the Republican nominee for President or Vice-President, the Republicans probably lose Arizona. The favorite-son effect is worth 10-15% in votes. Consider that even George McGovern got 45% of the vote in South Dakota in 1972 while losing neighboring North Dakota and Nebraska by about 70-30 margins and  faring about as well in Minnesota and not so well in Iowa, both of which were much more Democratic-leaning. 

The rest? States in any shade of green are sure losses for Obama should Mike Huckabee be the GOP nominee. Those in light green could conceivably vote against Mitt Romney. Those in dark green seem so polarized on ethnic lines (white-black) -- even Georgia -- that they are unlikely to swing toward Obama unless voting behavior changes. Sure, Georgia went for McCain by a small margin, and it is easy for many non-Georgians to think that greater Atlanta and such places as Athens and Savannah would go strongly for him. Northern Georgia is politically much like North Carolina; southern Georgia is much like Mississippi.   

The states in pale green were not as racially-polarized in their voting as those in dark green; white voters in Kentucky and West Virginia voted in the 40-45% range for Obama in 2008, which probably isn't that far from white behavior in Indiana or Ohio. Relevant rates in the states in dark green were very low. Should those rates approach 35%, Obama might pick off the Deep South.  Note well: that for Obama to pick off any of these states he must induce people to change some voting behaviors.

Pale blue? The Dakotas and NE-01. Obama will NOT win Nebraska at large, let alone NE-03 (arguably the most conservative district in America). Although these are not strong Republican areas, the Age Wave in these very rural areas is far too weak to make a difference in 2012. Besides, they hold only seven electoral votes. Perhaps rural areas induce kids to have political values much closer to those of their parents than is the case in Suburbia. In this category one sees only seven electoral votes. Obama isn't going to put much effort into winning them over.

Medium blue? That's one state, and a big one -- Texas. The Age Wave is strong in Texas; under-30 voters went for Obama by about a 10-point margin in Texas. Texas fits into no particular region. I'm going to discuss Texas as a possible pickup so long as people keep talking about any GOP nominee having any chance to win Wisconsin, because Texas was about as far from going for Obama as Wisconsin was from going for McCain, or until the GOP nominee has a 15% lead in Texas. Texas is essentially Kansas grafted onto Florida politically; Texas will go for Obama in 2012 if Florida goes to Obama by 8% or more or if Kansas goes to the Republican nominee by 10% or less. I don't think that the Age Wave will be strong enough to give Texas to Obama.

[pbrower2a]

The Rasmussen poll of Virginia is on the heel of another poll, so I call the state a tie. Arkansas? A matter of time.

Obama must in Pennsylvania about 53-47 to have a reasonable chance to win in view of the state being about D+3.

[pbrower2a]

The Rasmussen poll of Virginia is on the heel of another poll, so I call the state a tie. Arkansas? A matter of time.

Obama must in Pennsylvania about 53-47 to have a reasonable chance to win in view of the state being about D+3.

You didn't change NC, new PPP poll is out, look on the page before this one to see it.

I missed it. The correction is made.

[pbrower2a]

I hope the enlightened embracement of pragmatism taken by VA, NC, FL and NV, in 2008, wasn't a temporary blip. Still, they are holding Obama to a higher standard, at this stage, than they ever did Bush, which can only bode well for good government

We need good government more than we need bigger or smaller government. Bad small government will prove dreadfully inadequate for such needs as we will have in what look like dangerous times; bad big government will simply bleed most of us.

Many of our current problems result from having held Dubya too long to low standards of achievement, rationality, and moral conduct as President. We see the consequences -- consequences that won't vanish quickly.

The young-adult vote portends a strong trend away from the GOP as it is currently configured.  It reflects that young Americans no longer trust Big Business or the Religious Right, two of the key constituencies of the GOP.

[pbrower2a]

Why does everyone conveniently keep forgetting that both Quinnipiac and PPP also have him at 50% nationally?

Look at the spread. 50/42 implies that it is still a majority among those who make a choice. It's a substantial majority at that.

[pbrower2a]

Still more confidence in this president than I ever had the dogmatoid arthritic who preceded him

Because the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit and No Child Left Behind adhered so closely to conservative dogma?

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was practically designed to feed purveyors of standardized tests. It pushed teachers and school administrators to meet the demands of tests at the expense of other teaching activities -- anything other than the Three Rs. Such came at the cost of such essentials as science, history, civics,  and the arts. You know science, right? That's how we solve lots of problems. History is how we make sense of events. Civics tells us the norms of government (norms that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Abramoff, and deLay mocked to the detiment of good practice). The arts establish that more exists to life than crude acquisitiveness.

The Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit forced the government to pay top dollar for prescription medications, clearly something that only a corporate stooge would promote.

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Bush was able to lead?  Where was he when the economy began falling off a cliff in 2007?
[/quote]

He signed a ridiculous "stimulus" bill.  When the sh**t really hit the fan, he signed the EESA against the will of his own party.  Oh, and he did this with a Congress in opposition.  While he may have made bad decisions, you can't say he wasn't able to lead.

[/quote]

Whatever deficiencies Obama may have as a leader, his deficiencies are nothing contrasted to those of Dubya. Dubya was a pathological liar and a puppet of those who gave him his campaign funds. As for the stimulus bill, such came at the behest of his buddies in the financial industry, people who themselves created the problem and got scared of consequences of failure that might include mass revolt that might happen under his successor. To them it mattered far less who would be President then than that there be no threat of revolution. Choose your metaphor for the consequences: the financiers culpable for the subprime lending/real-estate bubble meltdown would be among the first to go to the wall before the firing squad (as in Castro's Cuba) or be led to the guillotine (French Revolution).  At the least the would be dispossessed like aristocrats in Lenin's Bolshevik Russia... it was the financiers who were scared. Add to that, much of the give-away was to foreign investors -- like capitalists in China -- who insisted on a return of the investment that the Bush maladministration pushed upon them. Those who rip off foreign lenders are in deep trouble; they make it good or they take others down with themselves. You didn't expect Chinese lenders to let us off the hook for our follies, did you? Don't you think that they would have ways in which to overthrow those who ripped them off?

As for economic management, Dubya stood for the most hare-brained of policies possible: rewarding tycoons and executives for gutting a nation's manufacturing with tax cuts while promoting speculation in real estate as an anodyne. Except that the object of speculation in the 1920s was more in corporate securities than in real estate, Dubya's economic policies were out of the Harding/Coolidge playbook whence came the disaster that Herbert Hoover couldn't undo.   

Dubya had one virtue as a politician: he was loyal to those who raised him into the formality of power. He never contradicted them and never showed any resistance to their most hare-brained and myopic schemes. When his handlers got scared, he did what they told him to do. That stimulus bill arose when financiers got scared of images of people like them losing their class privilege, if not their lives.

The best evidence that Dubya was a disaster was that the GOP used his image as sparingly as possible -- and the Democrats exploited contempt of his egregious failures as much as possible.  Dubya took the trust that others had developed in America and trashed it.

[pbrower2a]

Here we go again:

Again, VA is an average, and if it weren't an average, it would be a darker shade of green.

Except for some very old polls (SC, TN, SD, UT), Obama seems to be about where he was in November 2008.