Bushville « POWIP

13Jul/104

Takin’ the O! train

Goin' Down

Next stop: Boooooosh!-ville, if the most recent polls by CBS and WaPo/ABC News can be believed. Both polls show overall public confidence in Obama's leadership in the low 40s, 43% for WaPo/ABC and 40% for CBS; although the WaPo/ABC poll laughably puts his public approval rating at 50/47 (approve/disapprove of the job he's doing). What must be even more troubling for Democrats, of garment rending magnitude in fact, is that the GOP has taken the lead in generic ballot preference; even in the Ragin' Cajun "Corporal Cue-Ball T." Carville's poll! And Ace pretty much hits the nail on the head regarding the truth contained in the generic ballot numbers, in his usual inimitable style:

if this type of poll shows Republicans a little behind, they're tied. If it shows them tied, they're a little ahead. If it shows them a little ahead, they're solidly ahead.

What happens if the poll shows them solidly ahead?

Vote-a-geddon, the Democrat Votocalypse, that's what. Yep, that would be bad enough on it's own, but the piece de resistance is that the WaPo/ABC news poll skews Democratic in it's sampling by the margin of victory the President enjoyed 18 months ago! How crazy is that, when, the trend has been observed to be a continuum of decline for at least the past year. And who knew that both of these organizations would join in confirming the data that the much reviled, Reich-winger, Obergruppenfuhrer McPollster Scott Rasmussen has been saying for months now; surely they're all a bunch of racist h8terz, and should be roundly denounced along with the Tea-Party by the NAACP.

Cap'n Ed at Hot Air has a great analysis of the results of both sets of polling data, WaPo/ABC and CBS, and gleans from it the impression that it's indicitive of the fact that in the eyes of the American public Obama finally "owns" the economy. Oh well, so much for the old saw of blaming everything on BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

So, how long is it until we can regulary bandy about the phrase, "Obama's failed economic policies"? Well it might not be long, if the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove's analysis is correct:

You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival—which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.

In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obama’s natural base.

Apparently not so much.

Grove cites Mort Zuckerman, in the headlines most recently for admitting to penning one of Obama's speeches for him, as speaking of the administration's, "hostility to the very kinds of business culture that have made this the great country that it is and was"; by the way, thanks Mort, for being one of his most vocal supporters during the 2008 election. Then Grove quotes Niall Ferguson, of Harvard business school:

Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.” [emphasis-ed.]

I know...I know...SHOCKING! But the worst for the President?

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”

Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”

In a word? Heart-ache!

But, who really gives a tinkers-damn about what's going on in the minds of vapid glitterati like Mrs. and Mr. Streisand anyway. The answer? A whole lot of other glitterati, their hangers-on, and some of the intelligensia, that's who. These people shape a lot more opinion than I'm comfortable with, and as a group, their ilk can effect the opinions of a lot of, what I call, low information voters. And worse yet, the Democrats rely on these folks for big buck$; especially since they've burned a few bridges among their more traditional big donors in the business, finance, and wealthy American Jewish communities.

It really begs the question of just how long it will be before the wholesale distancing from the President begins by the members of his alleged base. But the most burning of questions?