Support for Obama Health Care Is Eroding

Does the President need to improve his “pitch”?

On Monday, the Washington Post/ABC poll reported that 49% of Americans approve of President Barak Obama’s  handling of health care while 44% disapprove. 

What many people missed, wrote Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, is that those who strongly disapprove of the president’s approach on health care now outnumber those who strongly approve by 33% to 25%. That presages further decline. Already, 49% of independents disapprove of the president’s approach, up from 30% in April, a staggering shift in 11 weeks.

And if anyone knows how to read the tea leaves hidden in statistics an polls, it’s “The Architect” of former President George W. Bush’s two successful campaigns. Writing under the header of “ObamaCare in Trouble”  the following summed up his analysis:

Mr. Obama is also slipping on the economy. Those who strongly disapprove now outnumber those who strongly approve of his handling of the economy (35% to 29%), of deficits (38% to 19%), and of unemployment (31% to 26%). On Tuesday, Gallup showed Mr. Obama’s personal approval was 55%, down from more than 60% a few weeks ago and lower than the 56% George W. Bush had at this point in his first term.

 

The polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals. One batch of such news came from a July 17 study by the Lewin Group that was commissioned by the Heritage Foundation. It projects that if the House bill becomes law, 83.4 million people—nearly half of those with private coverage—will lose private insurance as employers drop their plans. Mr. Obama’s promise that you can keep your plan is being left on the cutting room floor with nary a peep from the president.

Perhaps the pending problem for the President is that  health care reform has become identified as “ObamaCare” – a label when attached, becomes permanent.    Remember the fate of “HillaryCare”?

Related: health care, Karl Rove, ObamaCare, Washington Post/ABC poll

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 4:20 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.