Scott Rasmussen, the president of Rasmussen Reports and former Bill Clinton pollster Doug Schoen explain why support is crashing down around Obamacare.
In 15 consecutive Rasmussen Reports polls conducted over the past four months, the percentage of Americans that oppose the plan has stayed between 52% and 58%. The number in favor has held steady between 38% and 44%.
The dynamics of the numbers have remained constant as well. Democratic voters strongly support the plan while Republicans and unaffiliated voters oppose it. Senior citizens—the people who use the health-care system more than anybody else and who vote more than anybody else in midterm elections—are more opposed to the plan than younger voters. For every person who strongly favors it, two are strongly opposed.
Why can't the president move the numbers? One reason may be that he keeps talking about details of the proposal while voters are looking at the issue in a broader context. Polling conducted earlier this week shows that 57% of voters believe that passage of the legislation would hurt the economy, while only 25% believe it would help. That makes sense in a nation where most voters believe that increases in government spending are bad for the economy.
People do not trust official projections either:
66% of voters believe passage of the president's plan will lead to higher deficits and 78% say it's at least somewhat likely to mean higher middle-class taxes. Even within the president's own political party there are concerns on these fronts.
Read the whole piece to understand the dynamic and why Obamacare is bleeding support.
The AP-GfK Poll just released brings yet more bad news for Obama and Democrats.
More than four in five Americans say it's important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And 68 percent say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support.
Americans want improvements to health care, they want reform, they just do not want the present proposals that have been jammed through the House and the backroom deals that allowed the Senate's version to pass.
The Republicans refuse to support the current measures and the Democrats refuse to start from scratch and work with Republicans to build a proposal that has support from both sides, which the public thinks should have been done originally.
The whole process has been played out publicly and soured Americans who have born witness to the fiasco nicknamed Obamacare. The deals, the arm twisting, Obama's arbitrary deadlines which haven't been met (his latest is March 18, 2010), the refusal to allow the minority party any say of what is written in the bill and the finale which was televised where Republicans were able to highlight the ideas they have presented and watched summarily dismissed by Nancy Pelosi in her House version of Obamacare.
Pelosi, who is not up for reelection has already stated publicly that Democratic politicians should be willing to "sacrifice" their jobs to pass the highly unpopular Obamacare plans on the table.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.
Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
Think about the arrogance of that statement for a minute.
For every person who strongly favors Obamacare, two are strongly opposed.
That is what she means about "unpopular" and yet she believes lawmakers should ignore the American public because she knows what is best for them and they do not?
Every poll conducted by a variety of organizations, such as Associated Press/GfK, Rasmussen Reports, Gallup, Ipsos/McClatchy, USA Today/Gallup, POS (R), Newsweek, and PPP (D), all have a plurality or in some cases a majority opposed to "Obama and Democrats' Health Care Plan."
The final push on Washington DC from opponents and proponents of Obamacare has started as Denver Post reports:
Thousands of liberal public-option backers and conservative Tea Partyers launched last- chance campaigns Tuesday in the nation's capital to persuade Congress to pass — or reject — sweeping health care legislation.
Democratic congressional leaders conceded they may not have the votes for final passage of the overhaul by March 26, when Congress is to break for spring recess. They're trying to get party moderates and abortion foes to go along. President Barack Obama wants final votes even earlier, before his March 18 departure on an overseas trip. That appears unlikely.
SNIP
Despite their divergent goals, what these camps share is an acute understanding of what happened last year after Democrats failed to pass the health care overhaul before the month-long congressional August recess. In the boisterous town-hall meetings and small-government Tea Party protests that followed, all sides learned that delaying a big vote until after a recess buys the opposition time and that public demonstrations can have an impact on the political process.
"Our intent and our hope is to have no vote take place before recess," said Mark Skoda, founder of the Memphis Tea Party and a spokesman for the "Take the Town Halls to Washington" campaign that began Tuesday.
The group's website asked volunteers to travel to Washington before the two-week spring recess to lean on 66 Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives that they consider to be wavering on Obama's plan: "We want to let them know there is only one vote their constituents will support: No on Obamacare."
Related:
Democrats doubt deadline on healthcare
Note- Reminder that you can do your part from home by calling the list we provided yesterday and the list Hugh Hewitt provided before that and make your voices heard.
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