ABC/Washington Post: 9% thinks Obama is too conservative, 45% too liberal, and 45% about right

[BzaDem]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_09072010.html

The number that thinks Obama is too conservative has actually never hit double digits since his inauguration. Not once. It has been lower, but it has never been higher. Perhaps this will illuminate why some people here think that the view that paints Obama is a failure from the left is the view of a small minority, and that it is counterproductive for the election.

But more likely, this post will simply cue the people that bash polling as a science (and any other field that contradicts their narrative of a massive army of people who think Obama is a corporate shill).

[Sanity Claws]

1. Who created this poll? Goldilocks?

Pick from the following:

He is too liberal.
He is too conservative.
He is just right.

[applegrove]

77. LOL!

[NNN0LHI]

2. Recommended

[liberal N proud]

3. I think I know where to find the 9% who think he's too conservative.

[depakid]

4. Oh boy here we go with the right wing propaganda again

Even though you've been schooled in the past for posting up this non-sense.

First clue (as has been shown to you repeatedly before) labelling with loaded terms is not only meaningless, but misleading.

Since in the past you've shown both no aptitude for, nor and education and experience with quantitative or qualitative methods- I suspect this will fall on deaf ears, too.

Though it does help to explain why you persist in misunderstanding why Democrats lose support- and then elections.

[BzaDem]

6. "Even though you've been schooled in the past for posting up this non-sense."

As I have said before, just because some perpetually aggrieved Internet poster pretends to know the first thing about quantitative methods doesn't mean said poster ACTUALLY knows anything about said methods.

Though I do have to complement you for varying the wording of your whinefest. There is no mention of the words "enable," "legitimize," or "adopt!" We're getting there...

[depakid]

16. Whether I know anything or not has to be judged from my posts

I can only assume you read them at least when things like this come up (even if you have little interest in the science, social science and public health topics).

You post spurious material and make broad and misleading claims from them (engaging in confirmation bias in the process).

It's pretty obvious what the agenda is- and why you do it.

The more interesting question is why you so persistently refuse to learn?

[girl gone mad]

19. You lack any credibility.

Let's just be honest. For example, you've continually displayed a weak knowledge of economics, yet you pretend you know more about our monetary system than one of the top economists in the country.

You are here for one purpose, to bash liberals. Find better material.

[BzaDem]

50. "For example, you've continually displayed a weak knowledge of economics"

Best example of projection I have seen all day. Kudos to you.

"You are here for one purpose, to bash liberals."

At a policy level, I wouldn't be surprised if I was similar to most people here. How I am not similar is that I do not aide and abet Republicans in the voting booth by voting third party. I would argue that those who do so do far more to "bash liberals" than any message board poster.

[scheming daemons]

55. BZA didn't do the poll.... these aren't his "loaded terms"

...

[Fumesucker]

78. Yeah, but Bza is the one who gleefully pounced upon the poll..

And posted it here in order to use it to once again bash anyone to the left of Genghis Khan. :)

[Fumesucker]

5. How about a poll that questions people on actual *policies* and not semantically loaded terms?

Things like: "Do you think the health insurance reform bill should have included a public option?"

We have had over thirty years now of conservatives like Newt Gingrich demonizing liberals and the word "liberal", don't you think that has had an effect on the way people react to polls such as this that use that particular demonized term?

[BzaDem]

8. "Too conservative" is not a "demonized" term. So if there is this gigantic army of people who think

Obama is a corporate shill, don't you think they would have put "too conservative?" As opposed to "about right?" From the gigantic-army theory people here, I could not imagine a SINGLE one of them putting "about right" in a poll like that.

[Fumesucker]

11. True, "conservative" is exactly the opposite of a demonized term..

Conservative has been held out mean Mom, apple pie and the American flag.

ETA: I bet you couldn't get 45% of the population to say Bushie was "too conservative"..

[BzaDem]

12. Indeed. Which makes it even more striking that so few picked it if so many people think Obama

is a corporate shill. The people in this hypothetical army certainly would know the meaning of conservative.

Perhaps it's because... there actually is NOT a large group of people that thinks Obama is a corporate shill.

[Fumesucker]

20. You completely missed my point..

I honestly don't think you could get 45% of the population to say that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney was too conservative..

That's what happens when you incessantly propagandize a population for thirty plus years.

[BzaDem]

25. If so, that just proves my point that America is not a giant liberal army that thinks Obama is a

corporate shill. If they won't say ANYONE is too conservative, that just shows the population thinks of themselves as conservative to a much greater degree than people here claim they do.

You could try to analyze WHY that is the case, but that is not my point. My point is simply that the idea of an Obama-bashing army from the left simply does not exist.

[Fumesucker]

27. Not at all..

Cheney's actual popularity is down in the teens or low twenties, he's radioactive politically and not in a good way.

Basically because he's far too conservative for America but people other than political junkies like us don't make that connection.

[BzaDem]

35. He isn't going to win, but that doesnt mean a majority thinks he is too conservative

The truth is that poll after poll shows the ideological breakdown to be around 40% conservative, 40% moderate, and 20% liberal. So it is not surprising that the number of people who report "too conservative" is going to be much lower than the people who report "too liberal."

Of the people that vote against Cheney to deny him victory, many would say he is too conservative. A few would say he isn't conservative enough (there are irrational loons on the other side too who cut off their nose to spite their face). Many probably have no idea what his ideology is but dislike the results of his administration (such as a bad economy). And so on.

[Fumesucker]

42. The breakdown you mention is when you ask people to name their ideology..

When you ask people about actual policies the results skew far more liberal than when you ask people to define themselves with a label.

The American public is much more liberal in terms of actual policies than they are in terms of the labels they use, thanks in large measure to thirty plus years of continual and unrelenting propaganda demonizing liberals and liberalism.

[BzaDem]

47. Perhaps this is true (though I think policy questions vary extremely widely based upon small

variations in the wording).

But even if that is true, people identify the Democrat as the liberal and the Republican as the conservative. If people self-identify incorrectly, they are still often going to vote accordingly. This is not Obama's fault. This is the fault of a long term failure to educate voters about what policies mean. The distinction between how people really think and how they say they think is not very important, because "how they say they think" is much more in line with how they vote than "how they really think" at a policy level.

[Fumesucker]

51. No, it's a result of a long term policy to deliberately *misinform* the population..

A campaign of misinformation and propaganda that has gone on for thirty or more years and is still in full swing, indeed it's getting worse practically by the day.

And that misinformation campaign is not countered in any significant way by the Democratic party, indeed it seems that half the time the Democrats are helping to disseminate the misinformation.

[Radical Activist]

73. oh no, the public option again.

I think a cult has formed around it. But once again, why blame Obama for what the Senate would not pass? The Republican strategy worked on you.

[Hawkowl]

7. So Obama has a 45% approval rating?

Nonsense. What sort of useful data are we supposed to take away from this poll?

[BzaDem]

9. He actually has a 46% approval rating (the approval rating is asked in a different question).

"What sort of useful data are we supposed to take away from this poll?"

Simply that there isn't a large army of people who think Obama is a corporate shill, or that he is too conservative in general.

[mmonk]

10. The words have no meaning.

Only the 9% get it. For the recovery we need, we need a larger stimulus and government intervention at this time. The descriptive terms are subject to how the media presents people and changes with time.

[BzaDem]

13. I think you are attacking the people's views, rather than the accuracy of the result.

And I would join in to say that we do need a larger stimulus. But that is the fault of the Senate, not Obama, and in any case, few people (as a percentage of the population) believe that Obama is shilling for the corporations.

[mmonk]

17. The "Deficit" commission and what is going on with public schools

means there is some conservative thought processess going on. Also, prolonged detention and court protection of the Bush administration torture practices and rendition through the use of the state secrets privilege is pretty conservative as well.

[Recursion]

24. "Only the 9% get it"

"Everybody's lost but me!"

[mmonk]

46. Or "I'm right because I'm with the majority opinion".

[Recursion]

48. Fair enough

Though if 91% of the population can be that wrong, maybe it's time to re-think democracy.

[tkmorris]

75. Remember when Bush's approval rating hit 89% ?

It was just after 9/11 but yeah, I was proud to ne in a profound minority then. Those 9% aren't necessarily wrong.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Funny how the centrists think that 9% are simultaneously powerful and irrelevant.

To Rahm and Gibbs they are crazy and/or drug addled.

So, why worry about the Left. Just ignore them. It worked for LBJ and Humphrey.

[BzaDem]

15. They are irrelevant in the sense that there is not a large army that actually thinks that Obama is a

corporate shill, and that the opposition to him mostly comes from the right (not the left). Results like this basically disprove the theory that American is a very liberal nation, and the only reason we aren't getting liberal policies is because of some Goldman Sachs conspiracy or "the powers that be."

On the other hand, of course there is a chance that one election will be decided by a few votes, and the people who do not vote for the Democrat empower and enable the Republican to take office.

I don't see any disconnect between the two. In an election decided by one vote, even a Lyndon Larouche supporter can throw the election. Does that mean he is relevant in a general sense? I don't think so.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. The votes of the left are available..if the Dems earn them.

Blaming the voters for the failure of the party candidates to win their votes is an exercise in hubris.

[BzaDem]

22. The problem for the opposing left is that it is MUCH easier to move to the right and get the votes

of centrists.

In other words, for each liberal voter a candidate loses, they will move to the right to get a centrist voter. Why?

Two reasons.

The first is that centrist voters are at least rational. They will vote for the best candidate of the available viable choices. This is as opposed to people who oppose Democrats from the left, who are hopelessly irrational and think it is in their best interest to enable and empower Republicans to take office. There is very little point to try to please an irrational entity.

The second is that each independent voter who switches from R to D provides a net difference of 2. Whereas an irrational liberal moving from D to third party is just a difference of 1. So they get twice the benefit by moving to the right for each irrational liberal.

[Fumesucker]

34. Centrist voters are largely "low information voters"..

Which basically means they vote on personality or some other ephemera pushed by the M$M, they may be rational but they're not using truly rational bases for picking who they're going to vote for, low information voters are far more likely to vote based on sheer emotion because that's all they really know when it comes to politics.

Most of those who actually pay attention to politics and politicians are polarized to one side or the other of the political divide.

[BzaDem]

40. That may be true, but that doesn't mean they aren't easier to get than irrational liberals who

like to empower conservatives. There is literally NO POINT in trying to go after such an irrational group (who would actually help the Republican win at the expense of the Democrat).

[Fumesucker]

63. Yes, anyone who wants the government to do more for the citizens and less for corporations is..

"Irrational"..

:eyes:

[BzaDem]

85. No. That is not what I said. Any liberal who wants to help elect republicans by voting third party

is irrational.

[girl gone mad]

21. People associate corporatism with liberalism.

The auto bailouts and the bank bailouts were widely seen as liberal activism - socialist/communist interference with the free markets - despite the fact that true liberals were largely opposed to these unfettered handouts.

It's the unfortunate result of right wing media dominance. Anything unpopular is framed as a left wing idea.

[BzaDem]

23. Sorry, that explanation doesn't work. An hypothetical army that follows politics enough to even

develop the policy knowledge necessary to decide whether or not ANYONE is a corporate shill SURELY knows the definitions of the terms.

In order to agree with your explanation, I would have to believe that people here who oppose Obama from the left wouldn't select "too conservative" from those three choices. That is bogus. Nice try.

[Binka]

Do You Ever Make Sense?

Don't bother replying you are gone on my DU.

[BzaDem]

36. Excellent. n/t

[girl gone mad]

33. You don't get it.

Many of the people choosing "too liberal" would likely agree with liberals on most major policy issues.

Bank bailouts were extremely unpopular, but Obama owns them now and the general public thinks this was Keynesian liberalism, Democratic free spending anti-capitalism. In fact, it was corporate communism, but most people don't ever get to hear the liberal point of view, they just hear Obama defending these crap policies and the right wing sqwuaking "liberal!" and their opinion is solidified.

When people say Obama is too liberal, I'd wager the vast majority of them are specifically thinking about the bailouts and spending and the bureaucratic nightmare that is health care reform. They certainly aren't thinking that he needs to do more for corporate lobbyists and come up with more heavily bureaucratic stimulus programs, which is what you are pushing for.

[BzaDem]

37. I am not saying he needs to do more for corporate lobbyists.

And I obviously don't believe that.

In fact, in this post, I have not made ANY policy prescriptions. I am simply talking about the disconnect between the views of a few here (who think Obama is a corporate shill), and the views of the vast majority of America.

[Fumesucker]

59. Liberals think that corporate lobbyists get too much now..

45% of the population thinks Obama is too liberal.

Only 9% think he's not liberal enough.

The obvious conclusion is that Obama needs to do more for corporate lobbyists in order to win over those who think he's too liberal.

[depakid]

41. The larger problem (aside from the tar and feathering of the word)

is that there's no consistent (or reliable) definition of the term, and thus, respondents (and similar respondents in different regions) will give you vastly different answers when asked qualitative questions like:

What is a liberal? a conservative? What things do liberals and conservatives believe?

Moreover, when asked more quantifiable questions about whether one supports a specific policy (or even a specific value or belief) people will provide very different answers from what's "assumed" by this intentionally misleading corporate media poll. (I say intentionally because the "researchers" know exactly what they're doing- indeed, outfits like Gallop are often held up in grad school courses as sterling examples of how not to do research).

Likewise, if asked about whether President Obama supports (or should support) various policies that are decidedly "liberal" or "conservative" as reflected by the prevailing attitudes, beliefs and values objectively associated with today's "liberals" or "conservatives" responses will be "astonishing" to anyone buying into the OP's poll.

What would be interesting is to poll another sample drawn with the same methods and insert the word "progressive" in place of liberal.

Any bets the results would vary significantly?

[BzaDem]

44. The people here who bash Obama KNOW what "too conservative" means.

You would have us believe that there is a large army of Obama-bashers (from the left), that simultaneously have no idea what "too conservative" means. If such a large group existed, they would pick "too conservative" under ANY reasonable definition of the term. Yet they don't. (After all your posts here, would you seriously respond to a poll saying Obama is "about right"? I doubt it.)

I am not arguing anything about the percent that thinks Obama is too liberal, and I wish they would replace liberal with progressive. But that is besides the point for what I am discussing (the small "too conservative" result).

[Fumesucker]

53. Because the ones you refer to here actually know the difference between "conservative" and "liberal"

Unlike the great majority of the population who are basically politically at about a third grade level if that.

[depakid]

57. You're yapping on about bashing- I'm discussing the dissemination of propaganda

and attempting (for perhaps the hundredth time) to explain to you why the result you cite are spurious in relation to the claims.

Now, if one were studying perceptions of "liberal" and "conservative" and meant to follow up with some qualitative investigation along the lines suggested, they might be useful as a starting point.

However, as they are- what they're attempting to do here is influence public perception- not reflect it.

And unfortunately over the years, these outfits and their agenda driven sponsors have been quite successful in doing so- due in no small part to people's tendencies to believe in (or want to be part of) the larger herd. Hell, most everyone all want to be "part of a winner," right?

The defense against these things (and this applies to advertising too) is to gain a little knowledge about how it's done- so one can call bullshit whenever some outfit's attempting to play them for a sucker.

[BzaDem]

64. Conducting polls of small samples is a very inefficient way of influencing public opinion.

Even posting them on websites, which mostly knowledgeable votes look at, is quite inefficient. You don't influence public opinion very much by calling 1000 people and then putting the PDF on a site that will get tens of thousands of hits from the politically interested class. I can think of tons of ways of influencing public opinion that would be more efficient for a propagandist than that.

[LooseWilly]

84. If there is no "army" more "liberal" than Obama, why worry? Write off us 9%, or do something to woo-

Half-witted brow beating and appeals to popularity ratings/polls to urge a "not army" to play along because Obama's the one the rest of the pack-animal majority is with... isn't gonna cut it.

Present some hot and bothering policy... or keep walking. If Democrats can't resist driving away a "not army"... then they'd better hope that they're gonna draw enough to make up for those votes.

If we, the "not army" turn out to be enough of a loss to cost an election... it will be the fault of those you're playing apologist for... not our fault. If the party has a problem with that... then the party better do something about it. If they don't, then let's all welcome our new Republican Overlords... what the hell, we the "not army" aren't getting representation anyway... what the fuck do we have to lose?—Offer something to lose? (Didn't think so...)

[Ruby the Liberal]

26. 9%? Just who are they polling?

[Fumesucker]

28. Most likely people with land lines..

Which these days skews older and established, in other words more likely to be conservative.

Hell, I'm sixty and I haven't had a land line in over two years now.

[BzaDem]

30. Nope. They polled cell phones too. n/t

[Fumesucker]

45. I don't answer numbers I don't recognize..

Indeed I have my phone programmed to not even ring if the number is out of area, I know a great many people who do that these days and the younger you are the more likely you are to be able to accomplish programming your phone.

Phone polling hasn't been an accurate way of measuring public attitudes for quite some time now and is getting more inaccurate by the day.

[BzaDem]

49. It actually has been quite accurate. The RCP average got Obama's margin within 0.3%. n/t

[Fumesucker]

56. On something like "who I'm going to vote for" it's easier than picking ideological labels..

And we all know it..

Not to mention that polls vary quite a bit from one methodology to another even on supposedly identical questions.

[BzaDem]

58. If the sample is accurate, it should be accurate for determining self-identification.

The voters might have the wrong conception of what the labels mean, but that doesn't mean the poll has an inaccurate sample with respect to DETERMINING how voters identify themselves.

There are of course other ways inaccuracy could be introduced into a poll (such as question ordering, weighting, non-response bias, etc.), but all the polls with widely different surveys (that are very accurate on measurable questions like election results) indicate that the 40/40/20 split that keeps coming up is likely not a conspiracy of the entire polling industry to cook a result.

[Fumesucker]

60. If voters are misidentifying themselves then the labels are essentially meaningless..

Which is my entire point, the labels don't mean anything because most voters don't have a clue what they actually refer to in terms of policy.

[BzaDem]

61. They are only meaningless if the labels do not correlate with how they vote.

Unfortunately, the labels DO correlate with how they vote. So while they might not have the meaning you would LIKE them to have, that doesn't mean they have no meaning with respect to US politics and elections.

[Fumesucker]

66. Then how did Obama get elected?

He was painted by the M$M as the most liberal candidate in the history of the universe..

[BzaDem]

69. Actually, he wasn't. He constantly campaigned on bipartisanship, and in response 60% of moderates

voted for him. The conservative split was 80 against him, 20 for him. The liberal split 10 against him, and 89 for him. They are highly correlated with actual votes.

[Fumesucker]

79. He may have campaigned as a moderate but that's not what the M$M was saying about him..

The most leftistist candidate evah!

That was the way he was portrayed, they screamed about everything from him being a Muslim to his minister hating America..

[scheming daemons]

71. The 9% who think he's too conservative + the 45% that think he's just right...

...adds up to 54%. About the same amount that he got in the election.

[Fumesucker]

83. But the arguments that constantly rage here are because..

Those nine percent won't vote for Obama..

We are told that again and again by the sensible moderate centrists.

[scheming daemons]

87. They voted for him in 2008. If they stay home in 2010, he loses

45% = just right

45% = too liberal (this is the Fox News, teabagger crowd)


He has to hold that 9% that voted for him in 2008 that are pissed at him now. If they stay home, he's toast. But if he goes too far left to appease them, he loses some of the 45% "just right" crowd.

It's a conundrum for him. Move left and make the 9% happy.. but if it loses him too many "just right" folks, then what? Stay the course and make the 45% "just right" folks happy...but if it loses him the 9%, then what?

[BzaDem]

29. "a random national sample of 1,002 adults, including users of both conventional and cellular phones"

The fact that this is so surprising to you is an indication of how many people here who bash Obama from the left are out of touch with reality (with respect to their vision of what American voters think).

"This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone August 30–September 2, 2010, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults, including users of both conventional and cellular phones. The results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa."

[TBF]

38. That's right - 1002 adults. In a country of 307M people. Great sample. nt

[BzaDem]

43. Do you have ANY knowledge of how polling is done? Samples of 1000 are AMAZINGLY accurate when

compared to election results. They are weighted to approximate the demographics of the country, and that is why they only have a ~3-4 percent margin of error.

An average of some thousand sample polls in 2008 got Obama's margin right within three tenths of one percent.

[Lorien]

31. Yeah, right. And the media is Liberal, except for Fox Noise, which is

"Fair and Balanced", right?

:eyes:

Post all the propaganda you like. It's not going to change reality.

[Marr]

32. Yes, he knows how to keep himself two steps removed from the corporate legislation he pushes.

He's a crafty politician. I don't think anyone ever disputed that.

[kentuck]

39. That means he is more popular now than when elected !

Did he get 54% of the vote in the last election? Or 52%? Either way, he has not lost ground with this poll.

[Canuckistanian]

52. Is this an ONION poll?

Aww, I fall for it EVERY time. Those guys are geniuses.

[scheming daemons]

54. Well.... most of DU apparently represents 9% of America

[Fumesucker]

62. At one time GW Bush had a 90% approval rating..

Apparently those who disagreed with Dubya were wrong to oppose what he was doing.

[scheming daemons]

65. I didn't make a qualitative judgement on the 9%... just a quantitative one

Sometimes 9% of the population is right.



As an atheist, I know this all too well. ;-)

[Fumesucker]

67. You might want to read the thread..

There's been a fair bit of deconstruction of the bias in the poll..

[scheming daemons]

70. What's to deconstruct? They asked people a question, and the respondents used their OWN biases

Is Obama too conservative? Too liberal? or just right?


The "definitions" of the words were left to the respondents.


it doesn't matter if the respondents' definitions of the words were correct.


This was a poll about perceptions... and the electorate has their view of what "conservative" means and what "liberal" means. And that affects their voting.


If people FEEL that Obama is too liberal, even if the fact is that he isn't, it affects the way they vote.


The people that FEEL he is too conservative are going to be mostly liberals. And a disproportionate amount of them are on DU.

You can scream from the mountaintops "You people are clueless! He's a centrist!"... and you may be factually correct... but that's immaterial to what the voters think.


The poll didn't put any bias in the question at all... they just asked Liberal, Conservative, or neither. They didn't define the terms.

[Fumesucker]

76. But those biases often have nothing to do with actual policy..

Labels don't mean anything in governance, policy is what counts.

[scheming daemons]

80. But they *DO* have a lot to do with governance... here's how...

If politicians (in this case, Obama) get data that shows that the American people think he's being too liberal, they'll tend to try to correct that perception - by acting more conservative. And vice versa.

In order to keep their jobs, politicians will attempt to get as many voters as possible to say they are "just right" ... not too liberal or too conservative.


So the voters perceptions *DO* matter. And those perceptions are.. yes... created by the media.


But no matter how accurate those perceptions are, they do affect policy.


John McCain completely reversed himself on several key issues... mainly about immigration... because polls in his state among Republicans said they thought he was too liberal.

Arlen Specter ran as far to the left as he thought he could get away with, because polls of PA Democrats showed they thought he was too conservative.


Politicians react to the public's perceptions.. and they tailor their policies to match what the public perceives about them.


You're very naive if you think those "labels" have no impact on policy. They do. Very much.

[Fumesucker]

82. My point was though that the labels do not accurately reflect what voters think of policy..

Because when voters are asked about specific policies they poll far more "liberal" than when those same voters are polled as to what label they apply to themselves.

So by polling on how people label themselves a distorted picture of the electorate is reached, deliberately so IMO.

The reason for this being that thirty years of conservative demonization of the term "liberal" has led to very few people willing to apply that label to themselves despite the fact that many of those same people support liberal policies.

[scheming daemons]

86. I agree with you.... you arguing something different than what's in this poll, though

They weren't asked about Obama's "policies"... they were asked about OBAMA.


If they polled on the individual policies, you are right, liberal policies poll much higher than the liberal politicians that endorse them.


You are right about the demonization of the term "liberal".


But the fact remains... if 45% of the population thinks Obama is "too liberal"... that's a pretty fair indication of the amount of people that will automatically vote against him.

Which means he has to get 90% of the other 55% in order to win.

the 45% that think he's "just right" ... AND... the disaffected liberals that think he's "too conservative".



The story in this poll is not the 45% that think he's too liberal... that's the Fox News crowd that he'll NEVER EVER get.

The story is the 9% that think he's too conservative. The "bastardization" of the word "liberal" has nothing to do with those people.

Those 9% are disaffected liberals. He needs to win those back. Yes... it's only 9%... but it is more than enough to flip most elections.

[Fumesucker]

88. But those 9% aren't going to vote for Democrats..

Or at least that's what we're told time after time after time after time here on DU by those who are adamantly opposed to Obama being one scintilla more liberal.

[scheming daemons]

90. If enough of them "go Nader", it could be disastrous for Obama

His conundrum is that if he moves left to hold that 9%... how much of the 45% "just right" crowd does he lose?

[Skittles]

93. bullshit

many DUers think Obama is to the right of middle, not far right

[TheKentuckian]

68. He's a Democrat, a significant percentage of people would say he is too liberal regardless of policy

Another significant group would say "just right" regardless of policy and hell some might say too conservative reflexively as well.

The value is also degraded by there being no sensible gage of what is what policy would fit each label in most people's minds. It seems very hazy when so many are hollering about the President being a Nazi, Socialist, Marxist, illegal alien, Muslim.

Personally, I don't a whole lot care about which way the herd is stampeding on a given day but rather I concern myself with what is best and what will work. If we don't make it over those humps then I couldn't care less if a policy is popular or how many are ling up to co-sponsor.

Our job is to push for what we desire, not to cobble out compromises and cut deals. I'll demand good policy and wait for opinion to catch up as it usually does after a lot of burnt daylight, wasted money, blood, sweat, tears, life, and limb.

[Radical Activist]

72. I'm reminded of US Grant's quote about prairie coyotes.

After he won re-election by a landslide he said his loud critics reminded him of prairie coyotes. When he heard them at night they sounded like a pack of a hundred but all the noise was made by only two.

[RainDog]

74. Interesting set of polls - and a lot of questions

and interesting that this is what you chose to post out of all the various polls at that link.

what's more interesting, tho, in terms of real political life, is that the majority of American people polled despise Congress - and they despise the Republicans in Congress just a weeee bit more.

answers to various questions follow Lakoff's breakdown of the nurturer v. punisher view of the two parties among those polled.

thanks for the poll.

too bad you're using it to try to attack people on this site who may have a different opinion.

[Better Believe It]

81. Thanks for the post. A big K & R

The poll just shows how successful the corporate media and right-wing has been in in their efforts to falsely portray President Obama as some sort of progressive left-winger, even socialist!

[HooptieWagon]

89. Looks like Obama better start kissing some 9% ass chop chop if he wants a second term. n/t

[scheming daemons]

91. And how many of the 45% "just right" crowd will he lose then?

If he gets that 9%... but loses 9% from the "just right" group... what has he gained?

[HooptieWagon]

95. Probably none... unless he calls them "retarded", or says "fuck the DLC". n/t

[JoeyT]

92. Number of people believing something doesn't bolster an argument.

He can be considered too liberal by 90% of the country and still be a corporate shill.
It also helps a lot that the MSM runs around screaming about how liberal he is all the time, when he's anything but.

[DCBob]

94. Interesting.. this is the reason it is so difficult for Obama to go left..

The general public has been brainwashed by the media, conservative commentators and RW talks shows that Obama is a socialist and any attempts he makes to push liberal ideals and values only validates that perception. Its a serious problem that requires careful and precise political maneuvering.

I also agree with your premise that the left wing Obama bashers are few and far between.