GALLUP: Obama Approval stays steady at 62% .....for now

[FrenchieCat]

I give him credit for this, and not the media propping him up

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

[Xipe Totec]

1. Among the people who's opinions matter to me, his support is 100% n/t

[FrenchieCat]

2. I'm sure if we had a real press, he'd be in the 80%

But at the same time, many of the friends and acquaintances that I speak with
actually feels that it is obvious that the media's new job is tearing into Obama
as often as possible.

[jenmito]

3. I bet his approval will go up in the next few days due to the number of people who

saw Obama on Leno and who WILL see him on 60 Minutes and in the next press briefing. Luckily, not as many people saw what the media was saying about his "gaffe" last night.

[FrenchieCat]

4. Steady President with a steady rating....

While the media/GOP pulls its hair out trying to figure out how to knock him down.

So much thinking on their part at so little avail.

[jenmito]

5. Yup...

to the dismay of said media. :)

[scrappydo]

14. that is the problem with Republicans....

no critical thinking skills, no reasoning power!

[Political Heretic]

9. One thing the president has going for him is people love him and the media can't figure out why....

They just don't seem to get it. Every time he uses the media to speak directly to people, he gets more popular. This is great thing. Thank god bush did not have that skill!

I only wish he would use this amazing charisma and ability to persuade to push through some more bold forward looking policy. He's got a super majority of America on his side - I wish he'd stop playing around with a trickle-down recovery strategy and take the gloves off with a wall street that has been totally out of control of the last decade (and more). Time to make America work for the public again!

[HopeOverFear]

11. Obama is not playing with anything

And he is using his popularity to push his agenda. His budget is the most progressive DC has seen in years, and he's using the same grassroots effort that got him elected to get it passed. The only things standing in his way are blue dog dems and cynical complaining leftwingnuts.

[Political Heretic]

16. The President's job is about more than one thing

The President's budget looks pretty great, not unlike the AAR which I was cheering about right here on this very forum. That doesn't change anything that I said.

[HopeOverFear]

27. Yes it does actually change what you said

You said that Obama is playing around with his popularity, but that is not true. He used his popularity to get the AAR passed and now he's using it to get his budget passed. That's what Leno was all about, also. He's working hard while his approval ratings are still high because popularity is fragile to get his agenda (which is the same as yours) done.

[Top Cat]

12. The GOP can't understand either why the President has so much support

[starroute]

26. He will turn even that "gaffe" to his benefit in short order

Look at everything he did in last year's campaign -- this man has an unexcelled ability to turn lemons into lemonade.

In this case, I fully expect him to invite a group of Special Olympians to the White House -- maybe get some bowling lessons from the Special Olympian who was quoted about that the other day -- take them on as a cause, and use himself as an example of how even somebody who doesn't see themselves as prejudiced can be harboring unexamined assumptions about the abilities and value of a particular group.

In the end, it will have been a learning opportunity for the entire nation, and Obama will come out of it smelling like roses.

[Cha]

6. The US media is a big detriment

to America and all the mediawhores(they know who they are..jake tapper, I'm talking to you) should realize the hell on Earth that they've imposed on our country.

We needed someone like Obama to come along and beat them at their collective Machiavellian game.

[LittleBlue]

7. He's only had 2 months for God's sake.

These media types seem to be looking for an insignificant statistical wobble to generate news. :puke:

[Political Heretic]

8. Now is the time to use that excellent popularity to more in the areas of corporate reform

There has never been a better opportunity to get our country back on solid footing than right now. But doing so is going to require several things that the President hasn't yet done:

1. Economic recovery doesn't trickle down. - that we are still embracing parts of a trickle down theory is simply beyond me. How many times does this snake oil need to be exposed before we can put it to bed once and for all. The overwhelming focus of an economy recovery plan needs to be on putting ordinary people back to work, not funneling trillions of dollars to failed executives in the largest upward wealth transfer in history.

2. Friedman-economics is a failed, discredited ideology - and yet here we are, still dabbling our feet in its waters! If ever there was a time to ride public consternation for wall street and popular support for a president to a new era of responsible economic ideology it is right now. This is not the time for a tempered, one-foot in a discredited past, one-foot in an alternative future approach. We've seen thirty years of failure, and when you take the ideological rhetoric out of it, crystal clear concrete indicators show just how big of a failure the ideology has been. We need to eliminate some of the more lunatic and ridiculous money making schemes of wall street, which are very much like a child making up the rules to a game she doesn't understand in order to win. We need to reset consumer and market regulation in this country and deliver a new rule book along with a new generation of referee agencies and individuals to wall street.

3. Washington and Wall Street must be decoupled - Obama talked big on lobbying reform in his administration and then completely broke those promises since then. He needs to pick that ball back up. The economic game will never be anything but rigged as long as the players also make the rules for their own game. We need a set of players, then we need a separate set of referees and at no point should the players be able to become referees or buy referees off.

4. The tax rate needs reset to levels we had during periods of rich, sustained economic expansion when that expansion was still coupled with rising wages and rising standards of living. That would be prior to the late 1970s. In other words, forget the Bush tax cuts, we need to roll back the Reagan tax cuts and return to a responsible progressive tax system in which the people who use the most of the public commons pay the most to reinvest into its long term sustainability - because that's simply the only way a system such as ours ever effectively works.

5. Federal Public Policy must be created to develop a specific future procedure for companies that are reckless and irresponsible and then expect the tax payer to save them. I would cry tears of joy of Obama were to stand up and announce that the "era of privatized profit and socialized losses is over." There needs to be clear law in place so that this never happens again, and that law needs to be scary. Wall Street needs to be feared into straight, responsible business practice, knowing that if they are deceitful, reckless or incompetent they'll lose everything they have - including their freedom if even a whiff of criminality is detected.

6. We need to release our non-violent prisoners incarcerated for simple low-value substance possession charges (since we put more people in our (frequently) for-profit prisons than any other industrialized country in the world and start putting our ponzi schemeing, public raping, lying, cheating, manipulating corporate criminals behind bars for twenty to life. And they need to be imprisoned in the exact same prisons that non-violent offenders regularly find themselves in. Those would not be the little cushy resorts the Martha Stewart's of the world "summer" in.

That would be a start.

Otherwise, who gives a fuck if a president has a 62% approval rating or not. DO SOMETHING BIG WITH IT.

[FrenchieCat]

10. He ran on his own platform....for two years.

you may have voted for it.

You can make the perfect the enemy of the good, as that is your call,
but he's not going to use your things-to-do list.

Sorry.

[HopeOverFear]

13. Thank you

You know sometimes I think liberals don't know how good they have it.

[FrenchieCat]

15. I just don't think that some are as smart as they pretend to be.

Guess it's easy to whoop and holler for what you want,
and that's all you are doing!

[Political Heretic]

20. How would you know?

[HopeOverFear]

28. When Mitt Romney gets elected 4 years from now

those same people are gonna go "Damn if we had just been more patient with Obama we could've gotten more done"

[Political Heretic]

19. As compared to what?

So far no one has put forth a good argument as to why its somehow a problem to push for social justice and equality, to push our leaders to go farther to do what's right than they might otherwise go without any sort of pressure reminding them of their priorities.

No one has made a good argument.

Instead its stuff like below, with Frenchie politely insinuating that I am stupid, or you saying we ought to just shut up and be grateful for whatever it is you think we have. No one has yet taken a post I've made in the last 24 hours on this subject and given a single good reason why we shouldn't be political advocates, be our own lobbying group pushing the administration to do the things we believe are right and criticizing the administration when it doesn't.

[Political Heretic]

17. How do you know?

And why wouldn't we keep pushing him to do so?

Times change... Right now there is both the national climate and the approval rating to back more dynamic policy action.

So you are YOU to dismiss what can or can't be done? Why don't you start trying to work for it instead?

[Political Heretic]

22. PS - I'll grant you 4 and 6 are unlikely pipe dreams, but 1,2, 3 and 5 is what makes someone

...a responsible Democrat in my book.

I don't believe they are beyond the capability or ideological possibilities of Obama, and I certainly don't think they run at odds with his campaign platform and message, only with this post-election center-right economic team. He can still undo that. I don't mean undo like fire everyone - but he can certainly take the reigns and steer his adminstration in the right direction.

And 1,2,3 and 5 aren't radical. We haven't always been enslaved by Friedmanism and certainly haven't been held captive by "voodoo" economics that Reagan came up with. It was made - it can be unmade. By THIS president. There just needs to be popular will to push him to hear the people' voice and respond.

He can totally do this. Why would we even be fighting about these things? Everyone should want this.

[Jennicut]

18. Consumer mood and economic optimism are both improving as well

Economic optimism hit a 20 month high. We shall see what happens. http://www.gallup.com/poll/117022/Consumer-Mood-Surges-Spending-Doesnt.aspx

[Political Heretic]

21. That's very good news.

[Tarheel_Dem]

23. This is great news! I hope that Obama won't listen to his critics who

seem to think that he should lower his profile. He's as popular as he is, because he lets us see him. He bypasses the M$M filter, and talks directly to us like adults, and that's got 'em pissed off. And anything that pisses off the M$M is good by me. The rightwing can't get any traction with the President, and as a result, we can expect the criticisms to grow even louder.

The tool on Real Time tonight made an offhand reference to Obama's slipping approval numbers, and Keith quickly corrected him. Kudos to KO.

[RepublicanElephant]

24. is it asking too much for congress to hold hearings on media ownership?

i mean, even if they don't do anything, just to momentarily scare the crap out of the corporate media?

[FrenchieCat]

25. I'd like that!

I know he knows what they do.

That is something he needs to get to.
That and election reforms.