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[mainiac]

Oh gee I'm sorry that I didn't live up to the rules as you just invented them right now.  But newsflash, even by these new rules you invented you haven't produced anything remotely resembling a source on the general population wide data.

[GreatJustice]

Oh gee I'm sorry that I didn't live up to the rules as you just invented them right now.  But newsflash, even by these new rules you invented you haven't produced anything remotely resembling a source on the general population wide data.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What.

[RedKing]

Y'know guys, this should probably be split out into a new thread. Especially seeing as how healthcare isn't even a top-3 issue in the race at this moment. And you're both starting to make this a personal thing.

Let's get back to the horserace. And what better way to do that than by bringing in my favorite things in the whole wide wacky world of politics:
POLLS! (and snark)

From RealClearPolitics:

Obama's approval rating is hovering right around 48-49%, with his disapproval rating between 48-50%. We can presume the remaining 1-2% answered "pie".

Congress's approval rating is roughly the same as Encino Man's rating on Rotten Tomatoes: 16%. Hell, Brendan Fraser and Pauly Shore might make better Representatives than most of the folks in there now. Well...Fraser might.

For the main event, here's the latest polling data:

RCP Average 8/3 - 8/15 -- Obama +3.5 Rasmussen Tracking 8/13 -  Romney +1 Gallup Tracking 8/9 - 8/15  Romney +2 CNN/Opinion Research 8/7 - 8/8  Obama +7 Politico/GWU/Battleground 8/5 - 8/9  Obama +1 IBD/CSM/TIPP 8/3 - 8/10  Obama +7 FOX News 8/5 - 8/7 Obama +9

Worth noting: FOX News actually has the highest margin for Obama, which is surprising. The aggregate should probably be closer to +4, since as I've noted many times -- if there was a race between Bill Clinton in the prime of his popularity, and Richard Nixon's decomposing corpse, Rasmussen would show it as a tie.

RCP also has an interesting little ongoing feature where they show the current margin in the polls vs. the margin at this same point in the race vs. 2008 and 2004.

Today's spread for Obama: 3.0 points
Obama's spread vs McCain (8/16/08): 3.2 points
Bush's spread vs Kerry (8/16/04): -1.4 points

That last one is a good reminder that being up at this point in the race is no guarantee. But when you look at the overall movement in the polls, it's essentially flat. Romney started out at about a 6-point disadvantage in March. He closed it to within just over 1 percentage point in late July, but now has slid back to 3 points. The gap opened up pretty evenly on that one, Romney lost a full point, Obama gained a full point.
 
But hold on, you say! National aggregates aren't as important as electoral vote tallies! What about state-level polls?
Well, currently Obama has a "safe" 231 electoral votes to Romney's 191. That leaves 110 toss-ups. Obama only needs 39 of those 110 to win (and conversely, Romney would need to take 79 of 110, a much tougher task at this point)

How those 110 break down:
Florida -- 29
Ohio -- 18
North Carolina -- 15
Virginia -- 13
Wisconsin -- 10
Colorado -- 9
Iowa -- 6
Nevada -- 6
New Hampshire -- 4

Care to take a guess what states both sets of candidates have been racking up their frequent-flyer miles on?
As long as no other states "come into play", Obama can win with just Florida and Wisconsin. Florida is obviously the big prize here, but they're not going to put all their eggs in one basket, especially in a state known for election-day WTF'ery as Florida is.

So how do the top battleground states look at this point? Here's the RCP aggregates for the top five as of today:

Florida: Obama +1
Ohio: Obama +3
North Carolina: Romney +1
Virginia: Obama +0.7
Wisconsin: Obama +4.3 (honestly, if his gains in WI keep steady, it'll moved into the "marginally safe" category soon)
Colorado: Obama +1


All in all, things look pretty good for Team Obama at this point. If they can keep Joe Biden from shooting himself in the face with his mouth, they can probably hold ground and pull this thing out. There's still almost three months left, though. A LOT can happen in that time.

[toomanysecrets]

I agree with Great Justice. He's not talking about insurance per se, he's talking about people joining together as a community and trying to get the best service possible.  I didn't see him make any points about the historical availability nor the price of "insurance" instead he is talking about the AMA and other groups shutting down anyone they don't approve of.

Sure, in rural areas in the early 20th century there probably weren't enough doctors for there to be any kind of competition or bargaining.  But these rural doctors weren't making very much money, either.

The AMA is not part of the government.  It is a very old, very powerful trade union, in effect. 

In my view, the AMA was founded by elitists who wanted to monopolize the power to provide health care while at the same time shutting down anyone using herbal or natural remedies. The emphasis was on drugs and surgery because those are massive sources of income.  Cheap, natural remedies are abundant yet they cannot be patented and they cannot line anyone's pockets so from the viewpoint of the elite they must be scrapped and demonized at all costs. OH NO herbal remedies are not FDA approved.  But a fucking twinkie is and aspartame is too.

Are/were there quacks out there? Sure. Was everyone that got shut down a quack? Absolutely not.

This article has some good information about the AMA and how they decided who was a "quack."

Here are some good videos about some quacks real physicians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRua3NLg-Z8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTGye7kA6rM

[scriver]

Y'know guys, this should probably be split out into a new thread. Especially seeing as how healthcare isn't even a top-3 issue in the race at this moment.

Since you kind of brought it up I'm curious, but what are the top-3-ish issues this election?

[Nadaka]

Y'know guys, this should probably be split out into a new thread. Especially seeing as how healthcare isn't even a top-3 issue in the race at this moment.

Since you kind of brought it up I'm curious, but what are the top-3-ish issues this election?

#1: obama isn't white and was also born in kenya
#2: obama is marxist nazi who will take your social security/medicare away for socialism
#3: obama is a secret muslim waging secular jihad against jesus

[Mictlantecuhtli]

And bringing Sharia law, don't forget that.

[kaijyuu]

Damn you, Commie Nazi Obama!

[RedKing]

Y'know guys, this should probably be split out into a new thread. Especially seeing as how healthcare isn't even a top-3 issue in the race at this moment.

Since you kind of brought it up I'm curious, but what are the top-3-ish issues this election?

1. Unemployment rate/job creation
2. Tax/budget plans
3. Medicare

That last one is a bit of a surprise, but according to some new poll data, it's become an issue since Ryan was announced as VP pick (ruh-roh, Romney!)

From Reuters:

The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation said on Thursday that 73 percent of respondents polled in the days around the announcement described Medicare as "very important" or "extremely important" to their votes. That included large majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans.

The Kaiser foundation said a separate survey conducted a week earlier found that 58 percent of adults - including 55 percent of Republicans - favored keeping Medicare as it is today with all seniors receiving the same insurance benefits.

Only 36 percent of adults - and 39 percent of Republicans - said they favored a plan along the lines proposed by Ryan, according to the July 25-August 5 poll conducted by Kaiser and the Washington Post. That data had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

It's a long-held adage that Social Security and Medicare are the "third rail" of American politics. Looks like Romney/Ryan could be in for a shock.

[palsch]

Because the OWS thread is occupied with other issues and this may have electoral consequences on both sides;

FOI request shows that Obama was not behind Occupy crackdown. The request was put forwards by the right wing Judicial Watch to the DHS. The result;

Judicial Watch claims this demonstrates collusion between the Occupiers and the White House, when of course it does no such thing. What it does demonstrate, however, is that the White House was not only not coordinating some kind of crackdown, but seemed not particularly keen on shutting down protests at all.
...
The report does mention that the protests are disruptive to financial sectors, but since that’s the point of them, I hardly think that’s a risible statement. But they also go out of their way to detail the ways that Occupy worked very hard to minimize the potential for violence:
...
They then go on to say that while the original organizers (paraphrase) seem trustworthy and committed to peace, the growing movement is attracting less awesome folks, like Anonymous. This claim isn’t an issue; as time went on, a lot of Occupy’s resources were being directed to the question of what to do with the growing numbers of people in their ranks who weren’t willing to play nice.

This is going to allow the right wing to paint Obama as an Occupy supporter. It also highlights the fairly significant point (made in the link) that local power being exercised or abused does not reflect directly on administration policy. The idea that the Feds are a greater threat to civil liberties than local authority is a persistent right wing meme that doesn't reflect reality.

[GreatJustice]

Because the OWS thread is occupied with other issues and this may have electoral consequences on both sides;

FOI request shows that Obama was not behind Occupy crackdown. The request was put forwards by the right wing Judicial Watch to the DHS. The result;

Judicial Watch claims this demonstrates collusion between the Occupiers and the White House, when of course it does no such thing. What it does demonstrate, however, is that the White House was not only not coordinating some kind of crackdown, but seemed not particularly keen on shutting down protests at all.
...
The report does mention that the protests are disruptive to financial sectors, but since that’s the point of them, I hardly think that’s a risible statement. But they also go out of their way to detail the ways that Occupy worked very hard to minimize the potential for violence:
...
They then go on to say that while the original organizers (paraphrase) seem trustworthy and committed to peace, the growing movement is attracting less awesome folks, like Anonymous. This claim isn’t an issue; as time went on, a lot of Occupy’s resources were being directed to the question of what to do with the growing numbers of people in their ranks who weren’t willing to play nice.

This is going to allow the right wing to paint Obama as an Occupy supporter. It also highlights the fairly significant point (made in the link) that local power being exercised or abused does not reflect directly on administration policy. The idea that the Feds are a greater threat to civil liberties than local authority is a persistent right wing meme that doesn't reflect reality.

The DHS is not "local authority".

[palsch]

The DHS is not "local authority".

Which was my point. The DHS and administration were not behind the crackdowns. Local authorities were. However, eyes and blame went to the DHS and White House because they are seen as the default oppressors. That idea that Federal power is more dangerous than local power is what is wrong here.

[RedKing]

Because the OWS thread is occupied with other issues and this may have electoral consequences on both sides;

FOI request shows that Obama was not behind Occupy crackdown. The request was put forwards by the right wing Judicial Watch to the DHS. The result;

Judicial Watch claims this demonstrates collusion between the Occupiers and the White House, when of course it does no such thing. What it does demonstrate, however, is that the White House was not only not coordinating some kind of crackdown, but seemed not particularly keen on shutting down protests at all.
...
The report does mention that the protests are disruptive to financial sectors, but since that’s the point of them, I hardly think that’s a risible statement. But they also go out of their way to detail the ways that Occupy worked very hard to minimize the potential for violence:
...
They then go on to say that while the original organizers (paraphrase) seem trustworthy and committed to peace, the growing movement is attracting less awesome folks, like Anonymous. This claim isn’t an issue; as time went on, a lot of Occupy’s resources were being directed to the question of what to do with the growing numbers of people in their ranks who weren’t willing to play nice.

This is going to allow the right wing to paint Obama as an Occupy supporter. It also highlights the fairly significant point (made in the link) that local power being exercised or abused does not reflect directly on administration policy. The idea that the Feds are a greater threat to civil liberties than local authority is a persistent right wing meme that doesn't reflect reality.

The DHS is not "local authority".

And? DHS didn't do the local crackdowns either. You seem to want to jump on the "gotcha" wagon so fast that you don't even look at what you're jumping on. 


Yeah, I think that's a net boost for the Obama camp. People who are generally negative about the Occupy movement probably aren't keen Obama supporters in the first place. But there's a lot of lefties who had decided that Obama was "another one of THEM" because he didn't unfurl the flag of revolt and/or nationalize Wall Street.

[mainiac]

Horray reading comprehension!

[palsch]

I really hope I didn't miss this being posted;

Gallup poll on the Ryan pick. In brief;

- Worst overall immediate impression since Quayle.
- Fairly popular within the party though.
- Lowest recent name recognition other than Palin.
- Two thirds say the pick doesn't matter at all. This is actually the low side of average.

Overall? Probably a negligible impression on the election other than dragging medicare, budget fights and the House of Representatives into the election more forcibly than before. High party favourability could help turn out the base, unless the above turn them off again. Low name recognition could help improve his favourables into the future, although again that probably matters for very little and also leaves room to drop further.