RSS Feed MenuAll Obama, all the time! On Sunday the president appeared on five different news shows talking about the pressing need for healthcare reform NOW. The subtext here is “you people aren’t smart enough to understand how much we need healthcare reform so I’m going to keep pounding this idea in your head like children until you accept it.”
The president’s efforts to cajole Americans into buying into his healthcare reverie risks looking desperate. Americans would like to see jobs created and the economy improve. That’s what they want right now and healthcare reform isn’t on the menu, whether it’s $900 billion or $1 trillion.
During his taped interview with Bob Schieffer, Obama said: “Healthcare has become a proxy for a broader set of issues of how much government should be involved in our economy.”
The president is right, Americans are disturbed by the expanding role of government in their lives and they don’t want more government control in healthcare or anything else for that matter. Unyielding in his position, Obama refuses to listen to the cries from the angry crowd. Perhaps this is why the American people are tuning him out, covering up their ears and shouting “this isn’t change we can believe in!”
chinagreenelvis // Sep 21, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The funny thing about journalism is that if you have 200 American citizens sitting in a room and two of them yell out, “Hell no,” and it echoes off the walls, you can get away with titling your article, “Americans Shout a Resounding ‘Hell No’ “.
Kanzeon // Sep 21, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I don’t know what “Americans” want, and neither do you. Some actual EVIDENCE, like a POLL, or something like that, might indicate what a majority of Amercians want. If you had that, then you could speak to what a majority of Americans appear to want – but still not for all Americans.
Why do you think you can speak for all Americans? It’s insulting. Please stop it.
Thank you.
sinz54 // Sep 21, 2009 at 3:54 pm
kanzeon:
Here are some polls for you to play with:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/budget_priorities
http://www.gallup.com/poll/122969/Many-Americans-Doubt-Costs-Benefits-Healthcare-Reform.aspx
forgetn // Sep 21, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Americans are anxious about their health care, how could it be otherwise, both Democrats and Republicans are scaring that crap out of everybody, sure the 18-24 year old are not scared, but then they’re the same bozos who do car surfing — go figure.
I heard about several polls which were conducted recently showing that people (over 25 anyway) are worried about health care, you only have to have children to be worried if health care will be available when needed. It’s rather easy to find out what Americans are thinking on health care, there are many many polls (try Google…) that have been commissioned to investigate, the problem I suspect you are having is that those polls show that Americans wanted action in the spring, that hurts the republican’s message of “wait until 2012″, when we take power again. Part of the problem is that health care is not as interesting as the latest sitcom, or reality show. That’s just viewer exhaustion.
Bottom line, you have a cost explosion in the sector, part of the dilemma is that everybody “knows” that only the democrats will do something about health care — their is a perception that Republicans don’t care, its a false impression (I hope), but they had 6 years of total majority to tackle big issues and never really did.
Oh and using Obama’s against him is lame, don’t do it, it may seem like an amusing word game when you are doing it, but it just diminishes your point of view.
balconesfault // Sep 21, 2009 at 5:46 pm
See – you can keep quoting those general polls – but when I see a question like Rasumussen posits, I have to laugh:
1* Generally speaking, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the congressional Democrats?
AND WHAT PLAN IS THAT?
From where I sit, Obama hasn’t laid out a “plan”, so much as he’s laid out a set of goals that he’d like any plan passed by Congress to incorporate. Meanwhile, there are 5 different Senate bills, 4 of which have been passed out of committee, and the Baucus bill which hasn’t left finance yet – and those bills have some fundamental differences between them. There’s a completely different bill over in the House.
In other words – any question that asks about the “Democratic Plan” or “Obama’s Plan” is silly. If I think the Democratic Plan is Baucus’s, I’m against it. If I think it’s Kennedy’s, I’m for it. Meanwhile, there are 45% of the country who voted for McCain who can reliably be counted on to say they’re against any bill labelled “Obama” or “Democrats”.
Again – talk about the “Public Option” – and polls consistently show a solid majority of Americans in favor.
Meanwhile … given Crystal’s depiction of Obama “you people aren’t smart enough to understand how much we need healthcare reform so I’m going to keep pounding this idea in your head like children until you accept it.”
Isn’t that what Beck is doing for hours every night on Fox – telling the people who aren’t smart enough to understand how bad any reform under Obama is going to be until they accept it? Isn’t
that what Limbaugh is doing for hours every day on the radio? Isn’t that what Boehner and Cantor and Grassley and the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation are doing every time they can find a microphone? Isn’t that what the Insurance Industry is spending half a billion on doing right now?
I guess that Crystal thinks that the only good legislative proposal is one that is so absolutely bulletproof that opponents can spend half a billion on lobbying and advertising to fight and yet still retain popular support without any further advocacy by proponents.
Or maybe she just hasn’t really thought through this whole thing very well.
Observer // Sep 21, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Obama = Overexposed
Kanzeon // Sep 21, 2009 at 8:24 pm
sinz54:
Thanks for the polls. The question is: why are you doing Crystal Wright’s job for her?
By the way, two observations about polls:
First, if you don’t want to cherry pick, go here:
http://www.pollingreport.com/health.htm
The public is evenly divided, mostly.
Second, the disapproval numbers are bi-partisan. Many liberal democrats are furious over Obama’s tepid support of the public option. Many Americans are opposed to the government expansion into healthcare; many others think that there should be more government expansion into healthcare.
We can debate these points if you’d like. But it isn’t really debatable that Cynthia Wright’s blurb here is a contentless waste of space.
Pundits don’t like to cite evidence – they just like to wave a wand and declare that their unique opinion is the opinion of the America people. I don’t like it when politician do it – but at least they are elected.
All of us, liberal and conservative, should take a stand against pundit hot air. Please join me.
balconesfault // Sep 21, 2009 at 8:42 pm
All of us, liberal and conservative, should take a stand against pundit hot air. Please join me.
Well, after she got a lot of criticism for her “a friend of mine who was an Obama supporter in the last election now thinks that he’s wrong for X, so clearly X is overreaching” style in some of her previous postings … I guess she figured she had to alter her delivery some.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the right direction.
frankenheimer // Sep 22, 2009 at 1:17 am
Terrible article.
ProfNickD // Sep 22, 2009 at 8:42 am
Racist.
sinz54 // Sep 22, 2009 at 9:33 am
balconesfault:
polls consistently show a solid majority of Americans in favor.
But the Senate doesn’t have proportional representation.
Obama won only 28 states, and even some of the states he won (Indiana, for example) are still fairly conservative and only voted for him because they hated Bush. In those anti-Bush but still center-right states, the public option is opposed.
If the public option were nationally popular, it would have passed by now. But there are a lot of Dem “Blue Dog” congressmen who got elected in relatively conservative districts where it’s unpopular; and there are a lot of Dem Senators from relatively conservative states where it’s unpopular. And those Blue Dogs know that they can’t win re-election if they vote for it.
And they’re digging in their heels.
The popularity of the public option in the polls comes from the big urban areas. Thank goodness our Constitution doesn’t force the rest of the nation to follow their lead.
Kanzeon // Sep 22, 2009 at 11:00 am
sinz54:
“The popularity of the public option in the polls comes from the big urban areas. Thank goodness our Constitution doesn’t force the rest of the nation to follow their lead.”
Assuming what you say is true – why do you hold this view? As to the issue of healthcare, why shouldn’t the opinion of people in large urban areas take the lead? People from rural areas go to large urban areas to get treatment. The large urban areas have more people employed by or affected by all aspects of the medical establishment.
I’m not arguing the general wisdom of the constitutional structure – I just wonder on what possible policy basis it would be better to take the lead of a community with a couple doctors and no hospitals over one with a dozen hospitals in devising a healthcare plan.
balconesfault // Sep 22, 2009 at 11:39 am
there are a lot of Dem Senators from relatively conservative states where it’s unpopular
Actually, a few Dem Senators. And in the absence of polling to the contrary, it’s quite possible that in some of those states it’s more a matter of insurance companies finding it easier on a dollar per voter basis to have a lot of sway on the Senator’s vote.
At least that’s certainly what it looks like with Baucus’ bill, which seems designed primarily to make the Insurance lobby very very happy, and nobody else.
balconesfault // Sep 22, 2009 at 11:47 am
There is significant evidence that Congressmen opposing the public option aren’t fearing a public backlash – but a backlash from the deep deep pockets of the Insurance Lobby.
In fact, in the only poll I’ve seen on the subject for Montana (Baucus home state) voters:
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/22/poll-montana-dems-want-public-option/
Overall, 47% of Montanans favor a public option and 43% oppose it.
Nate Silver has churned through a lot of the state/district specific polling on the public option and found the following:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/analysis-public-option-is-likely.html
– The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 291 of the 435 Congressio/nal Districts nationwide, or almost exactly two-thirds.
– The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 235 of 257 Democratic-held districts.
– The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 34 of 52 Blue Dog – held districts, and has overall popularity of 51 percent in these districts versus 39 percent opposed.
chinagreenelvis // Sep 22, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Wow. NewMajority.com must literally be the only place on the internet where a mundane article can spawn intelligent, productive and civil discussion — instead of the other way around, as it usually seems to be.
I love this place.
chinagreenelvis // Sep 22, 2009 at 12:10 pm
(Fortunately there are plenty of good articles here, too, and the comments they generate have been equally satisfying…)
sinz54 // Sep 23, 2009 at 10:33 am
chinagreenelvis: NewMajority.com must literally be the only place on the internet where a mundane article can spawn intelligent, productive and civil discussion — instead of the other way around, as it usually seems to be.
I would like New Majority to invite some of us to write our own diaries, as DailyKOS and RedState.com do.
anniemargret // Sep 23, 2009 at 12:38 pm
No one I know is ‘tuning’ the President out on this issue. In fact, it is the opposite. The polls are both inclusive and incalculable. Real everyday people are dealing with loss of jobs within their families, and with it….loss of benefits. They are quietly hoping and praying that something of reform is done for the skyrocketing costs, and an public option for those who have no option.
The perception is most definitely that the Republicans, while occasionally offering up some cost analyses, basically would much prefer the whole topic just goes away. The same way they dealt with it during the eight years they held the presidency and the congress….ignore it.
While many people are rightly concerned about the issue, don’t think for a moment they have forgotten it as an issue. And don’t make the other mistake in thinking that just because we are not staging ‘townhall protests’ we are not supporting Obama and the Democrats in their efforts to get something constructive done on this very important, very serious issue facing millions of Americans.
anniemargret // Sep 23, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Typo. I should have printed the word ….’inconclusive’ not inclusive.