The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[anvi]

Looks like the approval of moderates/independents has seen a slight uptick during the Lame Duck.  CNN has it climbing from 55 to 60%

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132235761/obama-do-you-like-me-yet

[anvi]

I would argue, based on some interesting polls released by PEW recently, that neither the current budget battle (at least not yet) nor the Wisconsin standoff are having much of an effect on Obama's numbers.

Regarding the budget fight, PEW polls confirm that Americans, though they favor spending cuts, also favor the retention of government programs.   This general indecision on the part of the American people probably cancels out trends that periodically go in one or another direction.
http://people-press.org/report/702/

At the same time, support and opposition to public and private sector unions remains relatively equally split.  I would take this to indicate that people nationwide aren't that moved one way or the other by what Obama says about the crisis, though it will effect support in the state itself.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1897/favorability-labor-unions-salary-american-worker-productivity-public-sector

I strongly suspect that Obama's approvals these days, as opposed to most of 2009 and some of 2010 when their was a big "independent flight" and more accentuated Republican disapproval, are mostly effected by downturns in liberal support as issues come across the tv screen and internet.  JMO.

[anvi]

I can't resist making a historical observation about presidential job approval ratings as based on foreign and security policy successes and failures.  I realize that many different factors play into presidential approval numbers, and I also realize that the suggested analogy of the following comparison is not perfect.  But I still find the comparison striking enough.

Oct. 1983: Reagen approvals after attack on Marines in Lebanon:  44%
Jan. 1991: Bush 41 approvals after winning Gulf War:  90%

Sept. 2001: Bush 43 approvals after Sept. 11 attacks:  91%
May 2011: Obama approvals after killing of bin Laden:  52%

[anvi]

How many electoral votes does Berwick-Upon-Tweed have?

None.
But having a president who is well-liked internationally is an asset for any country.

[anvi]

How many electoral votes does Berwick-Upon-Tweed have?

None.
But having a president who is well-liked internationally is an asset for any country.

Tell it Edvard Benes.

Yeah, you're right.  America should have presidents whose allies revile them.

[anvi]

Being respected by other countries didn't help Carter, Nixon or GHW Bush.  Being "reviled" didn't hurt Reagan or GW Bush, domestically.

Frankly, being widely "reviled" internationally didn't hurt De Gaulle, either.

Being respected buy other countries did help Carter secure the peace between Israel and Egypt as well as fully normalize relations with China.  It helped Nixon open relations with China.  It helped GHW Bush enormously in putting together the Gulf War coalition and helping facilitate an end to the Cold War.  Being reviled didn't help Reagan internationally, and since foreign policy is largely the president's concern, this is significant, until his second term, when diplomacy played a much more significant role.  I would argue that something similar could be said of the presidency of George W. Bush.  What shows up in domestic polls on any given month is far from the the only thing that matters in a presidency. 

[anvi]

Is there any raw data available for most recent state-by-state approval-disapproval numbers that can be found in one list?

[anvi]

Respectfully, a few brief replies.

Presidents should be willing to make politically costly decisions if they believe these decisions are truly the right things to do.  There are actually more important things in the world than any president serving two terms.  Though president Bush '41 only served one term, he did so honorably, and I'm very glad it was him at that helm when the Cold War came to an end and Hussein invaded Kuwait.  If guaranteed issue survives in the health insurance industry in our future, I think lots of people will be glad Obama was there to insist on it during his term in the future.

It is simply not true that Obama has never held a blue collar job and has never worked in the private sector--he has done both.  He has also devoted a significant portion of his young life to helping poor people, giving up a much higher-wage position to do so.  Find me a Republican who has done anything like that, and I promise I will listen attentively to anything they have to say.

I come from a small town and lived there till my mid-twenties, and now live in a small town again, so I do understand and, more, am a fan of small-town American people and life.  But there is a reason small-town America is small-town America; not too many Americans live in small towns.  People have to understand a hell of a lot more than small-town life in order to be effective presidents.

It may be the case that Obama is not up to the task of prompting a quick economic recovery, and his legislative record may indeed demonstrate that.  But not one single Republican in the current field is up to that task either, and their respective records demonstrate that just as well.

To borrow yet another phrase from a much better Atlas poster than myself:
The End.
 

[anvi]

In the late 70's, during high school, Obama worked for Baskin Robins, then as a deli clerk.  In 1980, when he started attending college, he worked as a gift shop sales clerk, then one summer was a construction worker on the Upper West Side of New York, after which he spent some time working for a private company that processed health records for policemen.  During his late college years in the early '80's, he worked as a telemarketer.  From 1983-84, after graduating, he was a research associate for Business International Corporation in New York, after which he briefly worked for a non-profit and then became a community organizer.  Following that, during and after law school, Obama's law and teaching careers began before he was elected to the Illinois State Senate.  Pretty regular jobs for a high school and college student and then graduate, but jobs, blue collar and white collar, nonetheless.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/apr/15/joe-scarborough/heres-scoop-obama-has-worked-ice-cream-business-am/

[anvi]

Not in the urban America I live in; most of the folks here don't grand mommies that are bank vice presidents, a daddy with an advanced degree from Harvard, a mommy with a doctorate (okay, a silly one), or a step daddy that was an oil company executive... you get the point.

Obama's grandmother, a housewife when Obama moved in with them, took a job at the bank in Honolulu when Obama was in his mid-to-late teens because her husband was a busted insurance salesman, and worked her way to the vice-presidency of the bank later, something which you obviously begrudge.  Obama got nothing from his father but letters and a short visit when he was a boy.  Obama's mother married Soetero when he was still a student and when Obama was 6, and by the time he started working for an oil company, she left him and sent Obama to his grandparents when he was ten, so he didn't get much from that either.  I don't know what label I would give Obama in terms of class, but what's "fundamentally dishonest" is implying, as you do with the misleading characterization you spew above, that he was born in the lap of luxury.

But, whatever.  Obfuscating things is obviously your specialty, so I will let you go back to what you're good at, the daily reproduction of poll numbers.        

[anvi]

Gallup Daily:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Job-Approval-Center.aspx

Approve:  46%, +3.

Disapprove:  57%, -3.

Bad sample dropped out?

I guess it's 47%, not 57%, Disapprove?

[anvi]

The most effective thing Mittens said in my mind, with the voters who will decide the election, is that he worked for bipartisan consensus with Romneycare, and Obama didn't with Obamacare, and that approach can bear poison fruit.

No argument with the criticism that Obama didn't reach across the aisle enough on ACA.  Mitt's first debate strategy was excellent, and knocked Obama off his game entirely, regardless of content issues.  But, if memory serves, Mitt as governor was dealing with a massively Democratic state legislature, so anything that became law while he was in the big chair there had to be bipartisan.  The dynamic of DC politics is going to look a lot different with a Pub House and a Senate that has a narrow majority either way and is still very filibusterable.  If he wins, I don't think it will take long before we hear the Romney White House complaining loudly about Dem obstructionism and resorting to some occasionally unseemly dealmaking.  It's the bad place.

[anvi]

The Senate may not be able to filibuster.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/186133-reid-triggers-nuclear-option-to-change-senate-rules-and-prohibit-post-cloture-filibusters

That just restricted certain kinds of procedural votes after a cloture motion has been passed.