A.J. DiCintio
Poll bad for Obama, good for the nation
By A.J. DiCintio
Last week I opined that in his reaction to the "sequester" which he repeatedly blames on Republicans but, as Bob Woodward has reported, he proposed for the Budget Control Act of 2011, the president has revealed himself a fraudulent, vindictive, true-believing hack who closes White House tours to schoolchildren and threatens the jobs of Capitol janitors.
Happily, though surely with varying degrees of intensity, the public is coming to the same conclusions as revealed by polling that shows voters turning against a president who is infinitely more interested in conducting an eternal political campaign in the name of leftist ideology than in displaying courageous leadership regarding the country's problems.
Let's turn, then, to the McClatchy-Marist poll which finds "more voters now turning thumbs down on [Obama's] performance than thumbs up."
With respect to how Obama is doing his job, Marist reports that 45% approve and 48% disapprove, a 5% downturn in just two months.
The president's personal popularity has also taken a hit, with his favorable-unfavorable numbers falling to 48-48, from 53-44 two months ago.
Next, the poll reveals what voters think of Obama's handling of the all-important area generally described as "The Economy."
Despite the ocean of vitriol he has spewed at Republicans and the flood of fear mongering at the public, the president cannot find solace in opinions about his fiscal performance; for the poll finds that although voters are rightly unhappy about the sequester's meat-ax approach, on the general issue of reducing the deficit, they "prefer the Republican approach" by 44-42%.
However, the public's unhappiness about economic conditions isn't limited to the sequester and debt problems; for the Marist poll reveals a deep dissatisfaction that doesn't give Obama any reason to feel good, much less flash, as he feels compelled to do at every opportunity, his signature smug smile.
Before moving on to that dissatisfaction, we should first consider that Main Street Americans aren't fooled by a rising stock market fueled by the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy or, more accurately, Welfare Program For Big Banks And Other Deep-Pocketed Entities.
Next, we should realize that ordinary citizens can't be snookered by reports of ostensibly positive job numbers whose roaring headlines don't peep a word about wages and benefits.
Then, we can understand why Marist finds the following about the nation's voters, the overwhelming majority of whom don't live in the few specially advantaged counties adjacent to the nation's capital:
By a stunning 62-34% they believe the country still to be in recession.
Furthermore, just 22% think they'll be better off next year, with 41% thinking they'll be about the same and 36% worse off.
Think of that news this way: In yet another victory for Lincoln's observation ". . . but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time," an astounding 77% of voters refuse to be taken in by the insulting nonsense of the "Obama Recovery."
No wonder, then, that a landslide 62% of voters believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction while only 34% think the opposite.
Yes, the initial shock and anger over a horrendous recession caused by Washington and Too Big To Fail Banks is now more than four years in the past.
In the past, too, as Marist's Lee Miringoff observes, is Mitt Romney, the candidate Obama successfully demonized.
As a result, voters are turning hard eyes and tough minds on Barack Obama.
And increasingly, they don't like what they see as well as what they are forced to conclude –
For instance, that while the president talks a good show about believing "government [cannot] solve every problem. . . [and therefore] we have to challenge everybody to take individual responsibility for their own lives," he fiercely directs his policy initiatives at increasing the power, scope, size, and cost of the federal government with the aim of transforming the United States into a copy of the arrogantly centralized, bureaucracy burdened, shamelessly indebted "social democracies" that right before our eyes are uglifying Western Europe.
The fact is, unfortunately, that despite the left's abject failures of past and present, Barack Obama is radically committed to the belief that he was born to get the concept of the "social society" right.
So radically committed that despite the brave, independent voices who warn of the financial, cultural, and moral disaster certain to result when greed impels a people to eat the lives of their children through the perversions that are colossal debt and astonishingly enormous "unfunded liabilities," he continues headlong in pursuit of his fantasy.
So radically committed that he ignores mathematical realities pointed out by institutions such as the Congressional Budget Office and courageous reformers such as Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to insist that failure to reach a bi-partisan budget agreement is, in the words of Jonathan Karl at abcnews.com, "essentially no big deal" because, miracle of miracles, he has already achieved 90% of the budget reform the country desperately needs.
So radically committed that instead of speaking about the nation's fiscal situation with hard, sober numbers pertaining to government spending, economic growth, taxes, personal income, and demographics, he viciously denounces anyone who disagrees with him as harboring a secret desire to "gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid."
That's how dangerously radical Barack Obama is, and that's why the future of this nation depends upon polls that continue to turn out bad for him.
© A.J. DiCintio
March 17, 2013
Last week I opined that in his reaction to the "sequester" which he repeatedly blames on Republicans but, as Bob Woodward has reported, he proposed for the Budget Control Act of 2011, the president has revealed himself a fraudulent, vindictive, true-believing hack who closes White House tours to schoolchildren and threatens the jobs of Capitol janitors.
Happily, though surely with varying degrees of intensity, the public is coming to the same conclusions as revealed by polling that shows voters turning against a president who is infinitely more interested in conducting an eternal political campaign in the name of leftist ideology than in displaying courageous leadership regarding the country's problems.
Let's turn, then, to the McClatchy-Marist poll which finds "more voters now turning thumbs down on [Obama's] performance than thumbs up."
With respect to how Obama is doing his job, Marist reports that 45% approve and 48% disapprove, a 5% downturn in just two months.
The president's personal popularity has also taken a hit, with his favorable-unfavorable numbers falling to 48-48, from 53-44 two months ago.
Next, the poll reveals what voters think of Obama's handling of the all-important area generally described as "The Economy."
Despite the ocean of vitriol he has spewed at Republicans and the flood of fear mongering at the public, the president cannot find solace in opinions about his fiscal performance; for the poll finds that although voters are rightly unhappy about the sequester's meat-ax approach, on the general issue of reducing the deficit, they "prefer the Republican approach" by 44-42%.
However, the public's unhappiness about economic conditions isn't limited to the sequester and debt problems; for the Marist poll reveals a deep dissatisfaction that doesn't give Obama any reason to feel good, much less flash, as he feels compelled to do at every opportunity, his signature smug smile.
Before moving on to that dissatisfaction, we should first consider that Main Street Americans aren't fooled by a rising stock market fueled by the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy or, more accurately, Welfare Program For Big Banks And Other Deep-Pocketed Entities.
Next, we should realize that ordinary citizens can't be snookered by reports of ostensibly positive job numbers whose roaring headlines don't peep a word about wages and benefits.
Then, we can understand why Marist finds the following about the nation's voters, the overwhelming majority of whom don't live in the few specially advantaged counties adjacent to the nation's capital:
By a stunning 62-34% they believe the country still to be in recession.
Furthermore, just 22% think they'll be better off next year, with 41% thinking they'll be about the same and 36% worse off.
Think of that news this way: In yet another victory for Lincoln's observation ". . . but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time," an astounding 77% of voters refuse to be taken in by the insulting nonsense of the "Obama Recovery."
No wonder, then, that a landslide 62% of voters believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction while only 34% think the opposite.
Yes, the initial shock and anger over a horrendous recession caused by Washington and Too Big To Fail Banks is now more than four years in the past.
In the past, too, as Marist's Lee Miringoff observes, is Mitt Romney, the candidate Obama successfully demonized.
As a result, voters are turning hard eyes and tough minds on Barack Obama.
And increasingly, they don't like what they see as well as what they are forced to conclude –
For instance, that while the president talks a good show about believing "government [cannot] solve every problem. . . [and therefore] we have to challenge everybody to take individual responsibility for their own lives," he fiercely directs his policy initiatives at increasing the power, scope, size, and cost of the federal government with the aim of transforming the United States into a copy of the arrogantly centralized, bureaucracy burdened, shamelessly indebted "social democracies" that right before our eyes are uglifying Western Europe.
The fact is, unfortunately, that despite the left's abject failures of past and present, Barack Obama is radically committed to the belief that he was born to get the concept of the "social society" right.
So radically committed that despite the brave, independent voices who warn of the financial, cultural, and moral disaster certain to result when greed impels a people to eat the lives of their children through the perversions that are colossal debt and astonishingly enormous "unfunded liabilities," he continues headlong in pursuit of his fantasy.
So radically committed that he ignores mathematical realities pointed out by institutions such as the Congressional Budget Office and courageous reformers such as Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to insist that failure to reach a bi-partisan budget agreement is, in the words of Jonathan Karl at abcnews.com, "essentially no big deal" because, miracle of miracles, he has already achieved 90% of the budget reform the country desperately needs.
So radically committed that instead of speaking about the nation's fiscal situation with hard, sober numbers pertaining to government spending, economic growth, taxes, personal income, and demographics, he viciously denounces anyone who disagrees with him as harboring a secret desire to "gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid."
That's how dangerously radical Barack Obama is, and that's why the future of this nation depends upon polls that continue to turn out bad for him.
© A.J. DiCintio
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