NYT/CBS poll finds only 1/3 of Americans think the ACA will improve the health care system.

The full numbers won't come out until later today, so there aren't specific percentages at the squib just published at the NYT, and there isn't even a rough fraction to suggest how many of the rest thought things would get worse and how many took the neutral middle position. The headline is "Broad Skepticism on Health Care Law," and I'm just going to guess that the negative group is more than 1/3. Here's some teasing text:

Among all adults, nearly half think the law will not affect them at all, while among uninsured adults, just over one-quarter say that. And while a nearly 4 in 10 plurality of uninsured Americans think the health care law will hurt them personally, they are twice as likely as the general public to say the law will help them.

You can't figure out from that what either group said about thinking that the law would help them. I'll be interested to see how low those numbers are. It could be as high as 6 out of 10 and 3 out of 10 or much lower — 2 out of 10 and 1 out of 10 or worse. [ADDED: If 4 in 10 is indeed a "plurality," then 3 out of 10 for the uninsured think the law will help. You can figure that out. And that would mean that 1.5 out of 10 in the "general public" think it will help them. I guess the "general public" includes this uninsured, so the numbers of already-insured who think it will help them must be less that 1.5. I am relying on precision in the NYT language.]

The promise was that vast majorities of Americans would be helped, including nearly everyone with inadequate or no insurance, and that nearly all of the rest would remain [at worst] in a neutral position, keeping what they had if they liked it. So we are experiencing a monumental reversal of expectations. It's hard to fathom how crushed people feel, both in having the huge promise so badly broken and in having so much upheaval with such an effect on one's personal finances and physical well-being.

This is so different from other huge events in American politics. One political party chose to cause this great disruption. It's not like a terrorist attack or a war that demands that we change. It was chosen, and it was chosen with no decent understanding of how difficult a disruption it would be.

I think back to something Michelle Obama said in early 2008, which seemed ominous to some even then:

Barack Obama... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Maybe it's true that Barack has successfully prevented us from getting back to our lives as usual, our lives that many of us liked and wanted to keep. And it's true that he demanded that we shed our cynicism, and that was only the most ironic of the many way that he inspired our cynicism.

Dems plummet from 50%-42% edge for 2014 congressional elections to a 47%-49% deficit.

A 10 point shift in one month.

"The way Republicans can win those in the middle is not by abandoning their principles. To the contrary..."

"... the courage to stand on principle is what these voters respect. The way to win the center is to lead." Writes Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Republicans need to do more than simply say no to Mr. Obama and his party's big-government agenda. They can offer Americans positive solutions for the nation's challenges—to reduce dependency, and create hope, opportunity, and upward mobility for all citizens. They need to make not just the economic case for conservative reforms but the moral case as well—showing how conservative policies and ideas will make America not only a more prosperous society but a more just and fair one as well.

When I faced the need to reform collective bargaining in the government, I wanted to win, but I wasn't afraid to lose and didn't worry about getting re-elected. That was profoundly liberating.

Too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing....

Here's Walker's new book, "Unintimidated," which Meade and I have been reading out loud to each other... and not just because we like to think Scott and Tonette read this blog out loud to each other. The editorial corresponds to Chapter 25: "The Lessons of Wisconsin Can Be Used in the Battle for America." The first of 14 lessons is: "Change the polls, not your principles."

If you know you are doing the right thing, and the polls say voters disagree, change the polls, not your principles. President Reagan used to look at polls not to determine his positions, but to see where he needed to do more to persuade the public. That’s a sign of true leadership.

If I had listened to the polls during the fight over Act 10, I would have backed off of our plan. One poll found that if the gubernatorial election were held again, I would have lost to my opponent by seven points. My approval dropped to 37 percent. But I was so confident our reforms would work that I pressed forward into the political headwinds. And my confidence was vindicated. Our reforms did work. And voters stood with me in the recall election.

I wanted to win, but I also wasn’t afraid to lose. I cared more about getting things done than getting reelected. That liberated me to take bold actions I might never have taken if my first priority had been political survival. Too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing. I often say that politicians need to spend more time worrying about the next generation than the next election. The irony is that politicians who spend more time worrying about the next generation than the next election often tend to win the next election because voters are starved for leadership.

Really worth reading.

Obama at 37%.

As pictured by Drudge:



Bush's final approval rating in the CBS poll was 22%, but he didn't sink as far as 37% until 2006, 2 years after reelection. [ADDED: According to what's shown now here, Bush was at 37% in November 2005, which corresponds exactly to Obama. I was looking at a less detailed graph.] Bush's real sinking in the polls occurred with Katrina, which the media exploited to damage Bush.

By contrast, the media have generally boosted Obama, especially last year, facilitating his reelection. They minimized the various scandals, and they declined to delve into the looming problems in Obamacare.

Now we see crashing in Obama polls, and part of this is the media's fault. 1. They lulled people into thinking Obama was doing well enough, which continued his presidency, based on a false picture. 2. When the true picture could no longer be obscured, it was so glaring and obvious, and it got everyone's attention. 3. So many people were liking Obama because liking Obama was a cultural phenomenon, which inflated Obama's popularity and left it vulnerable to crashing when, at long last, there's a cultural message that it's the thing now not to like him anymore. 4. Plenty of people probably never liked him all that much, and they're just liberated from the social pressure to follow the latest thing, which is now so 5 years ago.

In these the last days of Obama as a religion, the WaPo writes of the "dwindling faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes that have buoyed him in the past."

Oh, the language of the once-true believers is so careful! And yet you can still see that it was a religion, kind of a religion. There was faith, but it's dwindling. It was faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes. And our faith buoyed him. We kept him aloft in the heavens and — this is a report on a poll — in the polls.

On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points....

Also interesting, but not specifically about Obama:

Forty-three percent say the Republican Party is too conservative, compared with 36 percent who say its views are just right. For Democrats, 46 percent say the party’s views are too liberal and 41 percent say they are about right.

So more people think the Democrats are too liberal than think the Republicans are too conservative. But the "about right" percent is 5 points higher for Democrats than for Republicans. Unless more people have no opinion of Republicans than of Democrats, that must mean more people think Republicans are too liberal than think Democrats are too conservative.

Ratings for the tea party movement are quite similar to those of the Republican Party. But in the aftermath of the partial federal government shutdown, a majority say they oppose the movement for the second time in two months. And more than four in 10 say the movement has too much influence on the GOP, while only 25 percent say its influence is about right.

Does that mean that about 35% would like the Tea Party to have more influence — and 60% say the Tea Party should have as much or more influence than it has now? Considering that Democrats were being polled here too, that sounds like an amazing amount of support for the Tea Party.

ADDED: I'm addressing the form of expression in the article, but I realize that I can click through to the details. 17% think Republicans are too liberal and 10% think Democrats are too conservative.And 21% think the Tea Party has too little influence in the Republican Party. 11% have no opinion. So 46% think the Tea Party has either the right amount of influence or should have more. Only 43% think it has too much.

AND: Here's the detailed view on the Tea Party question. Among Republicans, 40% say "about the right amount" and 26% say "too little," for a total of 66% percent positive. 26% say too much. Among Democrats, 59% say too much. Interestingly, among the 18 to 39 year-old group, 47% say right amount or too little, and 39% say too much. It's the oldest group — 65 and older — that is most antagonistic to the Tea Party. 50% say too much, and the combined too little and right amount group is 39%.

BUT: Here's the detailed view on the question of whether people support or oppose the Tea Party, and there you see clear opposition in the 18 to 39 year-old group.

Only "46% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the president purposely misled Americans about the potential impact of the health care law."

"45% disagree and think Obama honestly expected the law to work out the way he said it would" and 10% don't know, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Democrats believe the president was saying what he honestly expected to happen. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party think the president was deliberately misleading the country....

Younger voters are much less critical of the administration’s response than voters 40 and over are. Most voters under 40 think the president was honestly mistaken about the impact of the health care law.....

This is great news for Obama, considering how bad the lie was, all the press it's getting, and the extra incitement to anger caused by the horrible website. I'd say he's taken the worst hits, and now has no reason to (pretend to) try to keep "promises" made to that small — what is it, 15 million? — set of persons who liked the — substandard! — health insurance they had. Triage, baby. The death panel says: Let those broken promises die. Palliative care only. The website is what must be saved.

The important thing — for those who want Obamacare to succeed — is to continue to pull everyone into the system. The people are well on their way to processing what might be new information — it's not true that some folks get to stay out — so ignore them while they work through their stages of grief. All the effort should go into the website, the intake point to the system that all must enter.

If you don't want Obamacare to succeed, you can keep pounding the Democrats over the lies and broken promises, but I think your hopes are in rooting that the website will remain in its permanent vegetative state as various deadlines come and go and next year's election comes around, and then maybe you can get your mitts on that pullable plug.

"Are Unmarried People Bad for the Economy?"

A Gallup-poll-instigated question.

"49% of all people in the poll say that Obama is acting like a responsible adult in this budget battle, with 47% describing him as a spoiled child."

CNN did a poll and asked a question in this form: "Do you think Barack Obama has acted mostly like a responsible adult or mostly like a spoiled child during the recent debate over the federal budget?"

Responsible adult 49% Spoiled child 47% No opinion 5%

Same question, asked about Republicans in Congress:

Responsible adults 25% Spoiled children 69% No opinion 6%

Same question, asked about Democrats in Congress:

Responsible adults 35% Spoiled children 58% No opinion 7% 

Headline for the article reporting the poll: "CNN Poll: GOP would bear the brunt of shutdown blame."

What surprises me is how nearly everyone was willing to accept the push of the responsible adult/spoiled child dichotomy. And I wonder whether Democrats or Republicans were more likely to accept the invitation to think in those terms.

"The Republican Party is gaining a public-opinion edge on several key issues ahead of the 2014 elections..."

"... a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows."

Republicans are now rated higher than Democrats on handling the economy and foreign policy, and the GOP's lead has strengthened on several other issues, including dealing with the federal deficit and ensuring a strong national defense.

"Public Approval of Supreme Court Falls to All-Time Low."

A new Rasmussen Poll.

[J]ust 28% believe the Supreme Court is doing a good or an excellent job. At the same time, 30% rate its performance as poor. That’s the highest-ever poor rating. It’s also the first time ever that the poor ratings have topped the positive assessments. Thirty-nine percent (39%) give the court middling reviews and rate its performance as fair....

"Among young voters, only 48 percent approve of the president's performance, a 17-point decline..."

"... since the last CNN/ORC poll. These are the president's most loyal supporters, and the future of American politics."

"57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents."

According to a new Rasmussen Poll. Only 30% say that's unlikely (while 14% are unsure).

Republicans and unaffiliated voters strongly voice this fear. Democrats are more evenly divided with a modest plurality considering such abuse unlikely.

Does it feel "unlikely" when what you really believe is that if it's going to happen, what's likely is that it will help your side, in which case, why worry? Does it feel "likely" when what you really think is that if it does happen, it's your side that will get burned?

The poll also showed that "33% approve of the NSA program to fight terrorism, while 50% are opposed."

A plurality of Democrats support the plan, consistent with a typically higher level of trust in the government. Strong majorities of Republicans and unaffiliated voters are opposed.

Earlier results showed support for the program at just 26%. However, the increase in support is likely the result of question wording. In the earlier data, the program was described as being for “national security.” The new question describes it as being used in the “fight against terrorism.”

However, only 26% now believe it is necessary to collect data on millions of ordinary Americans to fight terrorism. Sixty-four percent (64%) believe it would be better to narrow the program so that it monitors only those with ties to terrorists or suspected terrorists....

Just 24% of voters currently trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time.  Forty-seven percent (47%) occasionally trust the feds, while 28% rarely or never offer such trust.

WaPo-Pew poll: 56% of Americans support NSA access to phone records. 41% oppose.

Back in 2006, when Bush was President and before a court order was part of the procedure, there was a poll that showed 51% support and 47% opposition.

There was also a question about what's "more important right now" — "for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy" or "for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats." In the new poll, 62% favored investigations and only 34% said privacy. The partisan skewing here is fascinating:

Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government’s main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006...  Compared with that time, Republicans’ focus on privacy has increased 22 points.

The reversal on the NSA’s practices is even more dramatic. In early 2006, 37 percent of Democrats found the agency’s activities acceptable; now nearly twice that number — 64 percent — say the use of telephone records is okay. By contrast, Republicans slumped from 75 percent acceptable to 52 percent today. 

Compared with a 2002 Pew poll, Democrats are now 12 percentage points more apt to support the government’s monitoring of all e-mails and other online activity if officials say that it might help prevent terrorist attacks. On the flip side, the number of Republicans who say the government should not do this has increased by 13 points.

That reminds me of the poll I took on June 7th, based on my observation that "The NSA data collection program separates the partisans from the ideologues, now that the President is a Democrat":



Maybe there's an algorithm that can get us to what Americans really think of privacy and security, without the filter of partisanship, but I'm afraid there is no such real thinking. It's all, always, inside the filter, even the desire to present oneself as ideologically consistent.

"One of the criteria is to work independently and do research and make decisions based on your experience and education."

"Whereas in this case, I had no autonomy at all through the process,” Cincinnati IRS staffer Elizabeth Hofacre told the investigators from the House Oversight and Ways and Means committees. As The Hill reported it on Thursday (linked last night by Instapundit):

Hofacre’s handling of those cases, she said, was highly influenced by Carter Hull, an IRS lawyer in Washington.

Hofacre said that she integrated questions from Hull into her follow-ups with Tea Party groups, and that Hull had to approve the letters seeking more information that she sent out to those organizations. That process, she said, was both unusual and “demeaning.”

I wanted to see how the NYT covered this story. Using the NYT's own search engine, I got zero hits for "Carter Hull" and only one for "Elizabeth Hofacre," a May 17th article, "Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio." Obviously, the May 17th article is telling the story of the low-level people screwing up, and not even out of a political agenda:

The specialists, hunched over laptops on the office’s fourth floor, rarely discussed politics, one former supervisor said. Low-level employees in what many in the I.R.S. consider a backwater, they processed thousands of applications a year, mostly from charities like private schools or hospitals.

For months, the Tea Party cases sat on the desk of a lone specialist, who used “political sounding” criteria — words like “patriots,” “we the people” — as a way to search efficiently through the flood of applications for groups that might not qualify for exemptions, according to the I.R.S. inspector general. “Triage,” the agency’s acting chief described it.

Has the NYT ever explored any alternative version of the events? I use the search "I.R.S." in the time period of the last 7 days, and get some reports on the spending on conferences, a piece about a poll on what Americans think ("Americans were divided over whether blame for the scrutiny of conservative groups should extend to the Obama administration..."), and some things about GOP strategy ("While some in the G.O.P. aim to scar the Obama administration... "Some Republicans See I.R.S. Troubles as Means to a Big Goal: Tax Overhaul").  I'm not finding anything that varies from the original story of the confused, overworked staffers.

Here's the June 6th article showing the results of a NYT/CBS poll: "I.R.S. Targeting of Conservatives Wrong, Most Say in Poll."

But the public is divided along party lines when assigning the blame for the scrutiny of the Tea Party and other conservative groups. Over all, 4 in 10 (including two-thirds of Democrats) think the I.R.S. acted on its own in investigating the conservative groups while slightly more (including 7 in 10 Republicans) say the Obama administration was involved. Those following the scandal closely and Tea Party supporters were significantly more likely than those who were not to say that the scrutiny was politically motivated.

What if they were following the scandal closely in the New York Times? Is that even possible?!

"Americans Think Officials Knew About IRS Political Targeting/Majority disapproves of the way Obama has handled the matter."

A new Gallup poll.

Americans generally see the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS as a serious problem, and they don't believe it was merely a function of rogue behavior at the local IRS branch responsible for processing the applications, but something top-ranking officials at the IRS or within the Obama administration were aware of. Importantly, independents join Republicans in expressing these concerns.

How damaging this will be for President Obama is still unclear, however. On the one hand, his overall job approval rating continues to register well above his rating on the IRS matter, suggesting that other issues matter more to Americans....

Or people just insist on liking Obama.

"American voters say 76 - 17 percent, including 63 - 30 percent among Democrats, that a special prosecutor should be appointed..."

"... to investigate charges the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today."

President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 - 49 percent job approval rating, compared to 48 - 45 percent positive in a May 1 survey... conducted before the IRS allegations surfaced....

Americans are divided 49 - 47 percent on whether Obama is honest and trustworthy, down from 58 - 37 percent, the last time Quinnipiac University asked the question September 1, 2011.

Support for an independent prosecutor to probe the IRS issue is 88 - 6 percent among Republicans and 78 - 17 percent among independent voters, 78 - 17 percent among men and 74 - 18 percent among women.

"There is overwhelming bipartisan support for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Voters apparently don't like the idea of Attorney General Eric Holder investigating the matter himself, perhaps because they don't exactly think highly of him. Holder gets a negative 23 - 39 percent job approval rating."

"The president’s approval rating, at 51 percent positive and 44 percent negative, has remained steady..."

"... in the face of fresh disclosures about the IRS, the Benghazi attack and the Justice Department’s secret collection of telephone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a leak investigation."

"We asked voters whether they thought hipsters made a positive cultural contribution to society or whether they just 'soullessly appropriate cultural tropes from the past for their own ironic amusement.'"

We = Public Policy Polling.

23% of voters said they made positive cultural contributions while nearly half – 46% – went with soulless cultural appropriation.

Come on. Doesn't everyone know that an amusing and colorful phrase is going to influence the answer? Ridiculous nonsense.

ADDED: The (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary traces "hipster" back to 1941.

1941   J. Smiley Hash House Lingo 31   Hipster, a know-it-all.
1946   M. Mezzrow & B. Wolfe Really Blues 374   Hipster, man who's in the know, grasps everything, is alert.
1948   Partisan Rev. XV. 722   Carrying his language and his new philosophy like concealed weapons, the hipster set out to conquer the world.
1956   Observer 23 Sept. 2/5   ‘Hipster’ is modern jazz parlance for ‘hep-cat’.

"Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s..."

".... including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show."

Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found....

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed  more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

It's obvious why people think that. Propaganda works.

"44% of Likely U.S. Voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that the government will try to confiscate all privately owned guns..."

"... over the next generation or so, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifty percent (50%) feel gun confiscation is unlikely. This includes 20% who think the government is Very Likely to make this move and 23% who say it’s Not At All Likely."

If you separate the respondents into "mainstream voters" and the more elite group that Rasmussen terms "the political class" (meaning people who "are more comfortable trusting that elite to rule the nation rather than trusting the collective wisdom of the American people"):

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Mainstream voters think the government is likely to try to confiscate all privately held guns, but 59% of the Political Class say that’s unlikely.

Confiscate all guns! That's such an extreme position.