Perception isn't reality. Reality is. The reality is that Barack Obama isn't all that popular. Just 56 percent of the American people approve of the way he does his job. Every president, save Bill Clinton, was more popular at the 100-day mark--which is today--since the Gallup organization began tracking presidential popularity in 1969. You wouldn't get this impression from watching the network news, or reading Time and Newsweek, which have become auxiliaries of the White House press office. Obama's "popularity," such as it is, is a bit like high school popularity. It ocassionally turns out that not many students like the "popular" kid.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Gallup has him at 63% today from what I can gather. Unless I am looking at the wrong numbers.
http://www.gallup.com/Home.aspx
Perception IS everything. And if you manipulate the polls and the media as the Obama machine has demonstrated they can proficiently do, it doesn’t matter what the majority of people think. And now that the Dems are setting up to steal more elections in the future what will a majority of voters matter?
Mike: I think the guy is using these numbers from gallup. http://www.gallup.com/poll/117853/First-100-Days-Obama-Meets-Exceeds-Expectations.aspx#1
I'm not sure the op-ed writer uses all this data honestly, but something fishy is going on with gallup if we compare these two pages.
It is also a little funny that (1) gallup.com's headlines are all so pro-Obama, and that (2) they use as evidence that Obama is doing well that he is doing better than Clinton was at 100 days, and that (3) gallup's video explaining the 100 day mark, by one of their big editors, is so positive, and he repeats one of the common fallacies of liberal db's: the richer you are in America today, the more likely you are to be republican. Now, think of the richest places in the country and the poorest places in the county: red or blue? And this is supposed to be a neutral expert in statistical measures of US public opinion?
Mike, I could be wrong but my understanding is that the Gallup numbers you refer to are an average of his approval ratings over the 100 days, whereas the numbers I refer to are Obama's current rating.
Mike, I can't explain the discrepancy between the Gallup numbers in the Washington Times and the Gallup numbers at their site. If anyone has any insight into whether the polls cited are from two different dates, if there is manipulation going on by either parties, or if there is some other reason for the difference here, please enlighten.
Xantippe,
Bill Gates? -> Democrat
Warren Buffet? -> Democrat
Michael Bloomberg? .... hmmm ... that's a poser.
The Waltons appear mostly to be somewhat conservatives and they make up a fair chunk of the top ten, but there's balance there more or less.
Sea King: I'm quite confused about whether you think you are somehow disagreeing with me... It is not true that the richer you are the more likely you are to be a Republican. Like education, the bottom and the top are more likely, but not overwhelmingly, to be Dems, while those in the middle tend, though not overwhelmingly, to be Republicans. Overall, Dems make, I think, 5-6% more than Republicans, but I am not saying that this is terribly significant. What IS significant is how full of it liberals are. It is obvious that the poorer areas are redder and the richer areas are bluer. This should at least make them stop and think, and perhaps not so idiotically repeat the same tired and false self-serving myth suggesting that those who disagree with them about the common good are really just greedy.
My concern is not the polls. I know Obama is a committed far leftist socialist-fascist to those who really think things through. I don't believe the issue is in the polls. I believe the issue is in the fact that 50% or more of the public either doesn't or won't be paying taxes at some point and therefore will effectively be dependents upon the rest of America. This coupled with a super fast moving society as far as information goes and a public less and less inclined to reflect upon life in general (the infantilization of the country as a whole) will possibly (is now?) lead to an insurmountable sea change for this society. Lets face it Obama has pretty much locked up a majority of major proportion in the Congress (filibuster proof) and the demographics economically point to an ever more dependent mindset in this country. I guess what I am trying to say is I don't know anymore if there is enough of us?
Xantippe,
I don't always post to disagree. I could have been clearer, but I was trying to provide some supporting detail to the "correlation" you brought up--which Bill Gates about disproves, and Buffett just add additional punctuation.
I thought your point about metro areas was a good one, but if the correlation is really about degree of riches, it's interesting no doubt that the top are Democrats and the top ten is mixed at best.
But it's definitely a good point that guys owning the equivalent of my modest home in the San Francisco hills need an income that would allow them to pay $750K+.
You'd have no trouble convincing me that libs are full of it. And I don't think they want to stop and think, they just want to use whatever finds purchase in the public to advance their agenda.
I'm just a guy who watched a lot of CSPAN throughout college, and even though I vigorously disagree with say, the treatment that Limbaugh gave Carol Moseley Braun--who often appeared to be a gracious, and well-spoken woman on the senate floor, over the years I've been amazed at what the Democrats can allow themselves to do for political points.
As for media bias, I educated myself by watching CSPAN during the day and their media coverage at night. They would often show an exchange with the dem getting in the sort of pithy comeback as the final word, even if that point had later been eviscerated in subsequent debate. What was I going to believe, the media or my own lying eyes and ears?! Watching the news, I would have gotten that the dems won the debate with that point--or I would at least have gotten the idea that the point stood up.
The day before Bush Sr. signed his compromise bill, prominent dems stood on the senate floor and begged him to be "responsible" and pass this budget, that, yes, had taxes. When he did, not a single dem got in the way of the fire from the Republican side, none bothered to offer that he had "been responsible".
It doesn't surprise me to find them floating a loser correlation that has no basis in fact--and wouldn't even if it were that Repubs made 5-8% more. Such a trend is not significant enough. And they are not going to stop as long as it has a chance of playing for the people.
“Bill Gates? -> Democrat
Warren Buffet? -> Democrat
Michael Bloomberg? .... hmmm ... that's a poser.”
Bloomberg? If it walks like a liberal and talks like a liberal, most likely a Democrat.
Hitler disdained the industrialists and the industrialists disdained him but they joined his party and worked mutually to serve for the advancement of their own agendas. For Hitler, to control and run the state; for the industrialists, to control and profit from the business of the state. All the while a complicit business class watched as their country disintegrated under the National SOCIALISTS and turned their heads from the atrocities perpetrated by the Fuhrer.
So, what is so different with how our business elites are handling the current chaos and change designed by the Messiah?
