Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

<font color=white>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 60 percent of American voters say they lack faith in President Barack Obama, according to a public opinion poll published on Tuesday.

The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama's presidency 18 months ago when about 60 percent expressed confidence in his decision making.

Confidence in Obama is at a new low but the poll found that his numbers are still higher than lawmakers of either major party four months ahead of the November congressional elections.

Asked how much confidence they have in Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future, 58 percent of respondents said "just some" or "none."

Sixty-eight percent expressed the same sentiments about Democrats in Congress and 72 percent said the same of Republicans.

The Post said problems in the housing industry, sluggish job growth and other economic issues may have taken a toll on Obama's approval rating.

Just 43 percent of all Americans, including a third of Democrats, now say they approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove.

The survey also found wide anti-incumbent sentiment with 62 percent of voters saying they were not inclined to support their current representative.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs in the November 2 election as well as 36 of the 100 Senate seats.

Democrats now control both houses of Congress, but a slight majority of those polled said they would prefer to have Republicans in control to serve as a check on Obama's policies.

The poll of 1,288 people was conducted July 7-11 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Eric Beech)</font>

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

I saw this yesterday and marvelled at the way these things are written to generate headlines. They had 60% approval now they have 40% approval. 60% did not just suddenly decide they dissaprove. 20% did, after 18 months. Normal and actually quite good as far as political polls of presidencies go.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one am enjoying my 5k tax credit I got for buying another house 2 months ago, happy with the caps finally placed on health insurance companies, and giving my eternal gratitude for the fact that I don't ever have to see another overdraft fee in my bank statement again.

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

Normal? True. Only Richard Nixon avoided a 6th quarter slide in his approval ratings.

Good? Hardly. According to the Gallup poll figures (which were at 48% as of July 12th) only Carter, Reagan, Ford and probably Clinton had lower approval ratings in the post-Truman era at this point in their presidencies. All of them, like Obama, were at sub-50%. After that, there's a huge gap to the next lowest who was Nixon at 58%. All of the others had higher ratings at that point in time.

The upside? At least he's still polling better than Biden, Gore and Chaney. (43%, 44%, 36% respectively). Oh yes, he's still out-polling BP as well (6%).

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

What you have to realize is that all those Democrats who say they aren't happy with him say so because he hasn't moved fast enough in slinging the country toward the left for their tastes.

But you can bet your sweet bippy they'll still be voting democratic come the next election. So, they may not be happy or satisfied or think he's doing a good job, but they'll still be voting the same as they did before.

Personally, aside from the bank bailouts and the border kerfuffle I'm relatively satisfied with what he's done. And the bank bailouts were already in place when he came in and the whole border issue is one I knew he would not be on my side on when I voted for him (you take the good with the bad, of course).

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

The Pundit Delusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The latest hot political topic is the “Obama paradox” — the supposedly mysterious disconnect between the president’s achievements and his numbers. The line goes like this: The administration has had multiple big victories in Congress, most notably on health reform, yet President Obama’s approval rating is weak. What follows is speculation about what’s holding his numbers down: He’s too liberal for a center-right nation. No, he’s too intellectual, too Mr. Spock, for voters who want more passion. And so on.

But the only real puzzle here is the persistence of the pundit delusion, the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting — who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback — actually matters.

This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.

What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid. Today, Ronald Reagan is often credited with godlike political skills — but in the summer of 1982, when the U.S. economy was performing badly, his approval rating was only 42 percent.

My Princeton colleague Larry Bartels sums it up as follows: “Objective economic conditions — not clever television ads, debate performances, or the other ephemera of day-to-day campaigning — are the single most important influence upon an incumbent president’s prospects for re-election.” If the economy is improving strongly in the months before an election, incumbents do well; if it’s stagnating or retrogressing, they do badly.

Now, the fact that “ephemera” don’t matter seems reassuring, suggesting that voters aren’t swayed by cheap tricks. Unfortunately, however, the evidence suggests that issues don’t matter either, in part because voters are often deeply ill informed.

Suppose, for example, that you believed claims that voters are more concerned about the budget deficit than they are about jobs. (That’s not actually true, but never mind.) Even so, how much credit would you expect Democrats to get for reducing the deficit?

None. In 1996 voters were asked whether the deficit had gone up or down under Bill Clinton. It had, in fact, plunged — but a plurality of voters, and a majority of Republicans, said that it had risen.

There’s no point berating voters for their ignorance: people have bills to pay and children to raise, and most don’t spend their free time studying fact sheets. Instead, they react to what they see in their own lives and the lives of people they know. Given the realities of a bleak employment picture, Americans are unhappy — and they’re set to punish those in office.

What should Mr. Obama have done? Some political analysts, like Charlie Cook, say that he made a mistake by pursuing health reform, that he should have focused on the economy. As far as I can tell, however, these analysts aren’t talking about pursuing different policies — they’re saying that he should have talked more about the subject. But what matters is actual economic results.

The best way for Mr. Obama to have avoided an electoral setback this fall would have been enacting a stimulus that matched the scale of the economic crisis. Obviously, he didn’t do that. Maybe he couldn’t have passed an adequate-sized plan, but the fact is that he didn’t even try. True, senior economic officials reportedly downplayed the need for a really big effort, in effect overruling their staff; but it’s also clear that political advisers believed that a smaller package would get more friendly headlines, and that the administration would look better if it won its first big Congressional test.

In short, it looks as if the administration itself was taken in by the pundit delusion, focusing on how its policies would play in the news rather than on their actual impact on the economy.

Republicans, by the way, seem less susceptible to this delusion. Since Mr. Obama took office, they have engaged in relentless obstruction, obviously unworried about how their actions would look or be reported. And it’s working: by blocking Democratic efforts to alleviate the economy’s woes, the G.O.P. is helping its chances of a big victory in November.

Can Mr. Obama do anything in the time that remains? Midterm elections, where turnout is crucial, aren’t quite like presidential elections, where the economy is all. Mr. Obama’s best hope at this point is to close the “enthusiasm gap” by taking strong stands that motivate Democrats to come out and vote. But I don’t expect to see that happen.

What I expect, instead, if and when the midterms go badly, is that the usual suspects will say that it was because Mr. Obama was too liberal — when his real mistake was doing too little to create jobs.

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

For those who supported, but now lack faith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn_IAwe8-q4

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

That's just offensive.

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

Faith in Obama? What'd he do, walk on water or something?

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

No but many people are truly convinced he is the Antichrist. Just type in "Is Obama" into google and its the second suggestion that comes up.

Re: Majority of Americans lack faith in Obama
 

Not sure if that beats "Is Bush a sith lord" which is also the second suggestion on Google. Wtf?