Public Option is Back

Is the "public option" back, or did it never go away? Is it negotiable, or something that won't be coming off the table any time soon?

To figure out the answer to those, and other burning health care questions you'll need a Ouija board, some dead chickens to toss blood on and chant over, and possibly two or three dozen glasses of scotch.

As seems to be the norm with the current administration one member goes on the Sunday talk shows and floats an idea. Depending on the reaction, others(or the President) come out and say "Yeah, what (name here) said!", or as is the case with the public option, "our cabinent member either misspoke, was confused, or was misunderstood"

This is what happens when your strategy sessions aren't predicated on doing what you think is the right thing, but instead what will get the numbers to track the right way. Say what you will about George Bush, but he at least spent more of his time trying to explain why something was right, instead of backtracking and covering his ass.

The other problem with sessions like that is you have to decide which tracking poll is the one that matters. In Obama's case dropping the public option hasn't moved the right towards accepting the other reforms, but might help with center. However, it's pissing off his base on the left.

The administration's reaction shows that it's more worried about keeping the base happy, by claiming that the public option is still a big part of the plan, even though that will move the center away from them.

Here's my suggestion for the President. Decide what YOU want. Tell your leaders in Congress what you want, instead of letting them put together the legislation. Then explain exactly what you sent up. You'll look more Presidential, and more like you care about doing the right thing, instead of the thing that will do the best for your poll numbers

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Funny Poll Numbers

To show the state of mind of Packer's fans over the Brett Favre saga, Sportsbubbler.com, a Wisconsin sports site, put up this poll:

Which one of the following would you rather see?

Come home and find your wife in bed with the snowblower repairman
51.82 %

See Brett Favre in a Vikings uniform on Sept. 8 beat the Packers
48.18 %

Either there are a lot of kinky Packer fan's out there, or too many fans have serious man crushes on Brett Favre. Either way, that's a disturbing set of poll numbers.

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Misleading Polls

So, I'm over at Yahoo, reading an article on Obama's softening support among Democrats, which isn't surprising, it's hard to remain in the 70% region forever. Later in the article, it notes that according to the NY Times/CBS Poll, both Obama and Hillary Clinton hold 5 percent leads over John McCain nationally. That sounded suspect to me, since Rassmussen and Zogby both have it the other way around.

Then, in the last paragraph, they explain it:

The nationwide telephone poll was taken March 28 through April 2, with 1,196 registered voters participating, including 510 Democratic primary voters and 323 Republican primary voters.

19% more of the participants in the poll are registered Democrats! Obama had a 47-42% lead over McCain from this poll, but 46% of the respondents were Democrats. That means if he got all of the Democrats polled to say they prefer him, then he only got 64 of the 363 non-aligned voters to say they'd vote for him. If 63% supported him (as they say earlier in the article), then he got about 50% of the non-aligned vote.

Regardless, having that big of a skew in the polled individuals is going to skew the results. Pollsters will tell you they "normalize" numbers to take out the inconsistancies, but a 20% difference is hard to normalize, or justify.

Considering the Times and CBS ran the poll I guess my surprise should be at the fact they released the numbers on who they polled.

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The Nader Siphon

(H/T To Brainster on this info)

Zogby has a new poll out, showing that John McCain wins a 3 way race against Obama and Ralph Nader or Hillary Clinton and Nader.

While there is still a big number of undecideds in either match up (11% in both), Nader takes away enough support from the left end of the Democratic party to cost either Obama or Clinton the race.

Something in the poll that should bug democrats more than the idea of Nader running is that in the McCain Obama results Obama gets 8% less support from Democrats than Hillary would (67% to 75%). Those votes go most likely to McCain, since Nader's numbers don't change much.

It will be interesting to see, if as in 2004 the DNC pulls out it's lawyers to try and keep Nader off the ticket in certain states to prevent him from siphoning off votes. Remember, they didn't try it in all states, only the swing states. Because McCain gains the most independent votes according to Zogby, they may have to increase the pressure in some states that they didn't last time.

It will also be interesting to see if Hillary's mouthpieces pull out those numbers to try and shore up their standings with the super delegates. Any poll that shows her maringally more electable than Obama is going to be ammunition for her. Even though her and Obama's numbers are about the same in both polls, her folks will definitely tout the numbers that show she'll do better with the party base.

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