Obama: Less Popular Than Syphilis

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“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

OK, maybe the headline is exaggerating a bit, but Obama’s poll numbers have definitely cratered in the past ten weeks. These two headlines were an interesting contrast of how the polls get spun:

Obama’s Current Approval Rating
Is The Ugliest Since Nixon
— Business Insider

A Drop in Opposition to Obamacare
Helps Stabilize a Struggling Presidency
— ABC News

ABC offers the “glass half-full” interpretation, viewing the dead-cat bounce as good news for the President, although we don’t actually know whether the situation is “stabilizing,” because future events could make things even worse for the White House.

Show of hands: Who remembers ABC News doing this kind of upside spin for George W. Bush during his second term? Anybody?

No, of course not. Whether or not the ABC interpretation is accurate, it takes a lot of digging in the poll numbers lately to find any encouraging news for Obama. Yet ABC’s Gary Langer was willing to do that kind of digging, because . . . Yea, Democrats! Go team!

It’s as simple as that, really. The media reports poll data according to their own hopes and expectations, and what they want is the same thing Democrats want, i.e., for this to be a short-term decline in the President’s numbers as a result of the problems related to the HealthCare.gov website, not the policy per se. The media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) are not prepared to accept the possibility that the President’s program is actually unpopular. ObamaCare simply can’t fail, from that partisan perspective, and so the reality of its failure must be explained away as a matter of misperception.

For the past five years, we’ve seen this blatant pro-Obama spin so often, in so many different contexts, that I fear we’ve begun taking it for granted, as if it is normal for journalists to engage in this kind of partisan rah-rah routine. And the stark contrast between the media’s reverential awe toward their idol and Obama’s sinking polls is a phenomenon that the media can only explain by saying that the people must be wrong!

 

 


37 comments

  1. Usually syphilis involves at least a few minutes of pleasure before all the unpleasantness. What does Obama have going for him?

  3. From Monty Python’s “Oscar Wilde” sketch:
    GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:Right. Your Majesty is like a dose of clap.
    (gasps) THE PRINCE OF WALES:What?!?GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:Before you arrive is pleasure, but after is a pain in the dong.

  4. And the flip side of the coin is that when we get an R president again the MSM will return to sliming that R president just like they did Bush, Palin, et al on a 24/7/365 basis. It’ll be deja vu all over again.

  8. “Less popular that syphilis”

    That is so unfair on syphilis, which I understand is making a great comeback among his followers.

  10. Note that the ABC poll never had opposition to OC above single digits when every other pollster had it in double digits, and their results have consistently been the outlier, being more favorable to Obama and OC than any other.

  17. It’s been fun watching Obama’s numbers fall as reality catches up.

    But it’s been more fun watching the traditional media squirm as they realize that they do not have a sacred calling to improve humanity.

    The pundits and the MSM are still adjusting to the rediscovery that they are not the Masters of the Universe and Grand Shapers of Public Opinion. They’re on the game board with the rest of us.

  20. “we get an R president again the MSM will return to sliming that R president ”
    We have the New Media now w/c could act as a counterbalance to the Old Media.

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