Jon, I do not wish to nit pick, however, the poll shows that 52% of those polled and 39% of those polled … not “voters” … hold favorable or unfavorable views … anything else is termed “projection” and represents guessing, or anticipating, what larger numbers of people MIGHT do or think.

Also, ” … I don’t think many people base their policy judgements on the legal opinion of Supreme Court Justices”, might just suggest another possible poll that, perhaps, ought to be conducted, don’t you imagine?

Especially. of late, in light of things like Citizens United, and a number of other SCOTUS decisions.

THAT kind of poll might get closer to an actual measure of what human beings living in this country really THINK about the “workings” of the government, which seems, forgive me for saying so, to be something people are … actually … concerned about.

YMMV

DW

Obama’s showpiece legislation on which he’s going to run for reelection is becoming less popular as it’s emptiness becomes apparent.

And Jon Walker has misrepresented the poll.

Who could have anticipated either of those.

What, the S.H.I.T. (Save Health Insurance Today) Act isn’t popular!!??

Who could have predicted?

HCR offered NO tangible public benefit. Obama via HCR found an excellent way to jettison Congressional Democrats in the Mid Terms b/c there was no tangible benefit to review PRIOR to the Mid Term Wipe Out.

After the Mid term election – After Congressional Democrats were driven over the cliff, I rec’d a mail piece from the Fed Gubmint describing a tangible benefit of HCR.

To WiT:

Children over the age of 18 up to age ___ can stay on your policy.

Obama is either a fool or he is complicit in the furtherance of all that is wrong in the USA.

IMHO, he is not a fool.

It almost seems like Obama designed the worst possible health care law he could come up with, the one least likely to offend his corporate patrons.

And I’ll never forget how he delegated the whole thing to Senator Baucus, who refused to have single-payer witnesses. And when they stood up to protest in chamber, Baucus’s first response was “We need more police.”

God love the Democrats, knights-templar of liberalism and working people.

I think they will repeal it and here’s why. I really don’t think anyone seriously meant for this bill to make it into reality for One. I think it was just a way to end the conversation about health care which was becoming increasingly embarrassing and revealing for the MHI which is clearly a useless parasite and to exactly what degree the democrats were sold out to corporations and pushing the now present Fascism that can no longer be denied.

TPTB wanted this conversation stopped and something had to come of all of the promises. So they came up with something that would be shot down and gave it plenty of time to happen, and also set it for a date that would keep all of this BS behind the second term election.

One thing is… more and more people are poor and would be eligible for help which they are cutting back the safety nets we already have, so obviously this makes little to no sense for them and their agenda. These law makers don’t really care about the unemployment rate and are still doing NAFTA and more and letting corporations send their jobs overseas with no penalties what so ever. Not to mention shedding jobs in the public sector like crazy when they should be inventing them if they really wanted the economy to recover which they very obviously don’t.

Not only do TPTB not want to pay for the huge numbers of Americans who can’t possibly buy health care but they would have to install a whole new additional safety net bureaucracy that would go over everyone’s paper work, finances, blah blah blah like welfare recipients to prove they qualify etc. in fact installing two huge expenses at the same time. Expenses that would cost more than just installing the damn Single Payer with cost controls.

I believe that the inevitability of this bill being killed is almost certain. But it would install more slave control but I doubt that they will pay for it so I don’t see it happening.

The Pooh Bahs in the Democratic Pantheon (all 1%ers I might add) are doing with free health care what the GOP Pooh Bas do with abortion: talk a good game, but never quite punch the ball past the goal line.

Why? Just as the rich Republicans love when the 99% keep their numbers low, the 1% rulers of the “other party” have no real concern if the 99% can afford life-saving pills and xrays.

When Obama gets re-elected, the Supreme Court will then be activated to strike down the law as unConstitutional, as it clearly was written to be. Sorry, folks, maybe next time!

The only reason to support Obama’s Court is that, unlike the Republicans, they still have some hazy ancestral memory that world wars are bad for the Aristocracy.

The Republicans masturbate to Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The greatest impact of HCR was the Mid-Term Rout of all the Democrats who voted for the POS. IOW, the dominant and lasting effect was the change in the composition of the House and Senate.

That – along with Obama’s prior grand scale bipartisanship inspirations (he gave them a seat at the table – he gave them the head of the table – he gave them the whole fucking table and all of the chairs)

– reconstituted and restored the R PArty.

Recall that Dubya had it 90 percent wrecked.

So here we are, after three years, looking at the very real possibility of JEB as President.

No one could have anticipated….

No reason to support anything D or R anymore.

Not sure I understand your objection. The poll says it was conducted:

From February 14 – 20, Quinnipiac University surveyed 2,605 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 1.9 percentage points.

good one LOL

Some good points.

I am interested in what the supremes do with it and Obama’s response. Personally I don’t think the supremes will strike it down. It is good business after all and they may want to hang it around Obama’s neck. If they do strike it down there is a chance it actually helps Obama.

LOL. I think Jon has managed to build quite a portfolio of meaningless articles to show potential bosses in msm.

he could have said people don’t like it because it is neither Affordable nor does it Care, but not sure if that gets you a job with msm

“should be” etc. refer to the future, not when the poll was conducted.

Hadn’t considered that possibility, but for a youngun starting out would be a pretty schmart tactic.

Protect the slave-holders!!! 50 million new subservient human beings coerced under fear of tax penalty to the state based corporate insurers? Fuck servitude to the health insurance lobby who buys law like slave owners. Americans need access to health care services. The money blown out our tailpipes, trillions of dollars,has a cost. Corporate Sodomy!

Had physical today. AOK… DOC says spending more time doing paperwork/insurance/state/Hippa than ever. All Costs more. Patients seen per day down therefore, access to care down compared to years past. Insurance still nickle/diming while and finding more ways to “interfere” with the patient doctor relationship and not pay! Reminds me of all the time politicians must spend raising money opposed to legislating?

Retarded….

Polls are used to “convince” those who are NOT polled, the vast majority, that this “sample” reflects how everyone “feels” or “thinks” about “things”.

It is supposedly “scientific”, however, it assumes, it pre-supposes, that the political $taus quo, (both “parties” which are virtually indistinguishable from each other in their fawning “service” to and rewards from the corporate elite) is the only “game” in town.

Among the uninformed, this assumption may be “true”, yet polls do not really serve the people OR the needs of the people, polls serve the political class, which includes the media, and reflect, too often, depending upon “how” questions are “posed”, the “outcomes desired by the powerful and their, usually financial, “interests”.

Polls manipulate opinion at least as much as they “sample” opinion.

For example, marym, when was the last time you, or anyone whom you know was polled for your or their opinions?

The “sample group”, demographically, tends to use land-line phone polling, when many, including most of those who are “younger” primarily use cell phones. It is this sort of “sampling” bias which is too little acknowledged or understood.

My suggestion that people be polled regarding how well they consider government is actually serving THEIR needs and interests would far more honestly reflect the need of change AND provide the people with much more meaningful feed back than simply asking how much they like or dislike policy, which is enacted without or despite the “input” of the people.

Your mileage may very, in terms of whether you may or may not agree with this perspective … however, since voting appears to have little affect on affecting, that is making manifest, the desires of the people, it would seem that other “feedback loops” might allow the people to begin to assess their options more realistically and effectively.

DW

I’m not sure the polling shows much. It is not popular and is not showing signs of getting better. On the other hand, there has been very little or no good press about it.the thugs regularly criticize it and the dema run away from it. Makes me wonder what value any of this really has just now.

mswinkle,

My RA who prolly hates me most to this day (2 or 3 decades later) is the one who had the most hubris, who thought he was the smartest, who thought the numbers crunching I assigned him (wtf, I was supposed to do that myself, wth was his job?) was beneath his dignity.

So I gave him an independent project to do on the side. It was a simplistic data analysis. It involved a couple of days of serious work, and writing up a 2 page summary. After a couple of weeks worth of work and about an 8 page write-up, I told him what was wrong with his conclusions. Among other factors, he had done correlations. I told him they were meaningless bc the only value of one data set vs. the other was at economic turning points. And so he should do a turning point analysis, not a correlation analysis which almost always fails on the turning point issues bc it is much more sensitive to trends than to turning points.

Now, mswinkle, if your eyes haven’t glazed over, you can immediately tell the reason why this guy prolly hated me & also the reason for my prior comment.

You have to believe that the thug candidate will use that 50 million who will have to buy this sgit insurance when some can’t buy food.

I used polls somewhat effectively when I was in the forecasting biz.

In addition to how pollers use them, pollees also use them to tell pollers what is wrong. Messages get sent in both directions. Saw it many times.

Even more important is when polls change direction. Keynes is reputed to have said (though I could not find documentation on the short occasion I looked): When I find I’m wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

Consumer change their minds when they find they’re wrong. That is my experience with polls. It is refreshing. And illuminating. One of the few revealatory stats.

Wow, tough replies . . . I have a comment or two also.

1) The ACA we all know was bought, sold and paid for. Obama, Congress, and all did the deed they were paid to do. End of story.

2) The biggest Fuck Up in ACA (aside from ACA and lack of single payer) is the mandatory requirement to BUY the crap. This only fuels libertarians and whackaloons and ME the progressive, to hate it and mock it and protest it. Uniting all against the DIMS who passed it. Fucking SCHTOOPID, DIMS!!!!

3) Ok, I thot I had something else, but I’ll stand with the above.

As they say in New York, fuck the fucking fucks.

As to polling and such, and criticisms of Mr. Walker, I guess if it looks, walks, talks like Centrism what am I to think?

I am not a stat person, not sure of the comments saying Mr. Walker got it all wrong one way or another.. .

But any putz would know then, and now, that the ACA was shit to begin with, is still shit, and will always shit.

N I think Mr. Walkers info might just, JUST suggest that simple fucking logic does prevail, hence my wondering why the dogpile on him for some simple diary.

Other things? Hmmm, ok, sure, I disagree with his centrism. I jsut don’t see that as an issue here . . . not for THIS proggy.

You?

Thanks. It just seemed to me that the poll said X% of voters think something “should” happen, and Jon had said the same thing, so it didn’t seem to be misinterpreting the polls. I wasn’t trying to address the larger question of the validity of mainstream polling.

I do know that often polls from even the most mainstream polling organizations show majorities supporting things like higher taxes for the wealthy, or Medicare for all, even though politicians and the media ignore those results. But I don’t disagree with you that it is a narrow, status quo framing, and that a more imaginative and creative approach is needed.

Though just for the record, this poll did say it used both land lines and cell phones, and I do occassionally get called to answer surveys (at least once from someone claiming to be Gallup !), though I never agree to participate :)

Well, I would be much more inclined to accept the results of the eCAHN POLL, than the polls generally reported in the “news”. That is simply because your statistical analysis, eCAHN, is certain to be MUCH more rigorous than the galloping “heards” and any polling which you were to do would permit, would insist, the “both directions” dynamic to function … Indeed I suspect it would be a central and advertised feature of such polls as you would conduct, since you would actually BE interested in using ANY feedback as effectively and efficiently as possible, you would be genuinely serious in the questions you posed and genuinely concerned that you had allowed sufficient latitude in such answers as your accurately “framed” questions would elicit … so as to “paint a more complex and nuanced “picture” than is traditionally seen.

Your comment about “trends”, rather than “turning points” suggests the practical “grounding” of your methodology. You would be interested in actually determining what people honestly thought about clearly defined questions, rather than seeking to ask questions in such fashion as to “lead” the answers to reflect what you were looking for.

I recall a physics class, long ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, back in the day, when the teacher asked the class a rather broad question regarding what “we” might expect to “find”, when we conduct experiments at the edges of our understanding and I rather confounded him by replying that, mostly, “we find” what “we” expect to “find”. When he asked me what I meant, I suggested that, were “we” to take “light” as the subject of our inquiry, that we would likely determine, first, whether we considered “light” to be in the “form” of “waves” or of “particles”, having to choose one, because depending on the nature of our experiment, AND our current level of “understanding”, we could find “evidence” of one or of the other, but not both, at the same time.

In other words, if we are looking for a needle in a haystack, it does not matter how many campaign buttons we find, or alligators, or black holes.

Seeking thoughtful and considered opinion from the intentionally confused and uninformed is more likely to result in alligators and black holes than inspired, needle-point analysis.

If we are asking about “feelings”, then “trends”, as you make clear, are and must be, subject to change … or even the “dog-piles” which Larue is so sadly lamenting.

Are people’s attitudes toward the efficacy of polls, their “meaning” or worth, “changing”? And, if so, does it herald a trend?

Are polls, even “good” and well-conceived polls, actually worth anything, if, as Larue suggests, that “logic” does prevail … and that logic is consistently and conveniently ignored?

Specifically does Obama have more “interest” in such a poll as this post concerns itself with or with a SCOTUS decision that says, as the law of the land, that what people think, understand, need, or desire … doesn’t matter a fig?

This is where that “inquiring minds” thinggie may be inserted, to avail or not to avail, that is pollish question.

Such “polls” as have been conducted about “Presidential Leadership” and the “regard” held toward Congress, for example, cannot be taken too seriously within a certain belt-wayed bubble … if “change” is to be the measure of anything but “chumps” … it would seem, trend-wise …

The current “Dog-Pile Polls”, registering disaffected disgruntlement among certain of the denizens of Firedoglake seem, likewise, to merit faint derision rather than indicating any “trends” worthy of mention or reflecting significant meaning.

Interpretations, please. What doth it mean, be there substance, a foretelling of things to come or signify it … nothing?

;~DW

I’m surprised Republican candidates’ criticism hasn’t focused more on the highly corrupt way the bill was put together which are entirely legitimate, rather than stupid generalities that they give like that it’s a government takeover of healthcare. I can’t be the only one that remembers Max Baucus’ behaviour, the Ben Nelson bribe and the meetings with industry representatives like Billy Tauzin, and the distance between that shit and what Obama campaigned on. The backroom dealing was really odious and was obviously going to stick in the public’s mind.

Maybe they’re saving that for the general or something, where they have to give the appearance of moving to the center. I dunno. Anyways, it’s certainly the Democrats’ fault for all the consequences they reap from this corrupt, toxic bill. “We have to pass the ACA or the Republicans will take the House in 2010, and we’ll fix it later, and once we pass it it will become popular” has to rate up there with the idea of Saddam crawling out of toilets across America with a vial of anthrax clenched in his teeth…

These responses hurt me. As a progressive as far left of big O as he is yet again left of the New Right, I still need this bill. The high risk pool literally saved my father’s life. They can’t have it back.

You mean a bill written by big pharma, health insurance companies, hospitals and Wall Street, isn’t popular?. Oh say it ain’t so! Who woulda thunk?

Wealth extraction codified………

a question to ask would be has any recent government initiate gained popular support?

Perhaps, rather than calling those who participated in the “poll”, “voters”, we might call them “customers”, or “clients”, or “rubes”?

Or “the downtrodden”, the “misinformed”, the “misled”, the “huddled masses” … being skewered on the forks of the forkin’ sociopathic, a$tute, elite?

“Voters” somehow, renders the whole “deal”, gives the “appearance” of the “deal” being … the result of “democratic institutions” …. and processes.

I am seriously glad if ravenshroud’s father actually benefited, but it is hardly, for so many others, an honest or even a promising “deal” … not the “poll”, mind you, but the other “thing” … which is so much less than it could have been, should have been, and needs to have been.

Let us poll the condemned, and see what the “preponderance” of them would prefer for their last meal … bearing in mind eCAHN’s most stellar advice, “Eat the dessert first, ‘cuz ya never know what might happen …”

Rant over, as polling results show that it doesn’t affect “outcome”, in any case., in the slightest or the least way …

DW

These polls are completely meaningless unless we know why people like or dislike it. It’s all conjecture anyway because it’s a phantom policy that has no basis in reality.

While I will NOT vote fascist, cuz, they’re fascists …

I do NOT give a shit if the entire obama-pelosi generation of sell outs lose. their duplicity after 2006 PROVED what these sell out sacks of shit were made of – fucking lies and greed.

What did the bastards so AFTER their 2010 shellacking ?? they pitted the unemployed against George Bush’s tax welfare and … ta da! screwed the 95% again!

rmm.

The poll is of registered voters. That is why the word “voter” is used. It is considered to by the stand by which one reports polling.

Obama was seriously played on this, and it will harm efforts to enact real healthcare reform for many years.

“Obama was seriously played.” Sorry but Obama seriously played the people. He refused to stand up for what was right. Let Baucus do his dirty work and played coy off somewhere under cover and refused to let Single payer advocates to the table which was the very least he could have done, but rather had them arrested. IT was no mistake that Baucus living in a sparsely populated right wing state was given this task which judging by his constant ear to ear perma-grin was quite rewarding.

The fact that the Health Care Reform was a contrived scam is plenty reason enough to start the conversation over and people saying…oh we’re screwed and have to lay down for another reaming is a HUGE part of the problem.

This country can’t afford to coddle this worthless HCI parasitical elite any longer, it is breaking the backs of American business, killing Americans en masse, crippling and damaging the populace, and costing trillions in excess of what is necessary, and delivering inferior care centered solely on profits while people suffer and have their finances drained.

We cannot stop fighting for Single Payer, which will give us advanced and cluster counting of disease which is covered up by the elite HCI shielding polluters like Koch, and the enormous profits on every single medical procedure no matter how minor. My doctor just billed my Medicare for $700 f’ing bucks for seeing him for swimmer’s ear. And that was their part. I paid over $100 for a miniscule small prescription that had about 10 drops in it and did absolutely nothing. Im not exaggerating. The bottle was about the size of a dime and filled about a third. My part of the doctor bill was around $150. That’s almost $1000. for a damn ear infection. That is just wholesale robbery.

Meanwhile, people are now expected to work for a low wage with no bennies while TPTB pretend like all adult people can get health care through their job which is a complete and total lie.

Right Jon.

Might you read some other comments and ponder?

Or is there no need to consider the insult of implying that voters have, at the moment, ANY democratic means of actually influencing what goes on, what is done in their names, at home and abroad, of changing anything?

You do realize we have a few, very much ignored “problems”?

Or should those of us who would seek to actually see that human beings have actual “influence”, to have a meaningful hand in the decisions which affect their lives, their children’s lives, their neighbor’s lives, the lives of human beings everywhere on this planet and the planet itself, just simply sit back and wait for a call from Gallup or some other pollster?

Carry on, Jon … as I am certain you shall.

There are serious, life and death questions which the current, conventional “wisdom” has no interest in hearing, or acknowledging and those silly folks who would pose those questions are seen as lacking in proper decorum and not being “nice”.

Jon, I appreciate your efforts, really I do. However, if polls mean nothing except fodder for the political class and their astute manipulations, to be heeded or ignored at a whim and light fancy, and such polls, ultimately merely reflect discounted “discontent”, or in the case of political polls of all stripes, the prejudice, the enforced ignorance, and the embrasure of continuing insanity, then do such efforts really meaningfully inform, unless the larger context, which you do include in this post, with your added lines about the Supreme Court, is included?

If you have not viewed this link, put up by Southern Dragon, this morning, then may I suggest that you might consider doing so?

Consider it a “personal favor”, if you may.

http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=73076.

With respect,

DW

Obama played with himself on this. Sold out single-payer before the discussion began, although virtually every poll said the public strongly supported it. Sold out public option for thirty pieces of silver. Put obstructionist morons in charge of getting “bi-partisan” congressional support in committee. Allowed industry operatives to write the bill. Allowed the issue to float during recess so the right could organize opposition.

Then he went on national teevee and lied to everyone about his support for the public option, when months previously his minions had already guaranteed the HC industry that the public option was dead.

The crowning achievement may have been waiting until 2014 to put (most of)the rickety mess into effect.

Stupid, evil, delusional or all the above?

Oh, hey, how about

Medicare for All?

Gee, why couldn’t Obama and the DC Dems think of that?

Eyeballs and brains glazed over by healthcare industry contributions?