Donald Trump's Support Likely UNDER-Estimated: Many College Educated Undercover Supremacists Likely Hiding

Some significant number of Trump supporters, especially those with college educations, are "less likely to say that they support him when they’re talking to a live human” than when they are in the “anonymous environment” of an online survey, said the firm's polling director, Kyle Dropp.

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Polls May Actually Underestimate Trump's Support, Study Finds

By David Lauter
Donald Trump leads the GOP presidential field in polls of Republican voters nationally and in most early-voting states, but some surveys may actually be understating his support, a new study suggests.

The analysis, by Morning Consult, a polling and market research company, looked at an odd occurrence that has cropped up repeatedly this year: Trump generally has done better in online polls than in surveys done by phone.

The firm conducted an experiment aimed at understanding why that happens and which polls are more accurate -- online surveys that have tended to show Trump with support of nearly four-in-10 GOP voters or the telephone surveys that have typically shown him with the backing of one-third or fewer.

Their results suggest that the higher figure probably provides the more accurate measure. Some significant number of Trump supporters, especially those with college educations, are "less likely to say that they support him when they’re talking to a live human” than when they are in the “anonymous environment” of an online survey, said the firm's polling director, Kyle Dropp.

With Trump dominating political debates in both parties, gauging his level of support has become a crucial puzzle. The Morning Consult study provides one piece of the solution, although many other uncertainties remain.

Among the complicating factors is this: The gap between online and telephone surveys has narrowed significantly in surveys taken in the last few weeks. That could suggest that Republicans who were reluctant to admit to backing Trump in the past have become more willing to do so recently.

Another issue is that not only can polls change over time, but Trump's support in pre-election surveys might not fully translate into actual votes. He has not invested as heavily as some of his GOP rivals in building the kind of get-out-the-vote operation that candidates typically rely on, particularly in early voting states.

Some of the polls that show heavy support for Trump have also shown him doing better among self-identified independents who lean Republican than among regular GOP voters. At least some of those independents may not be in the habit of voting in primaries and caucuses, which could make a robust turnout operation even more necessary.

On the other hand, a candidate of Trump's level of celebrity may simply not need much of a get-out-the-vote operation. No one really knows.

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The Democrat's Debate: Pundits Said Hillary Clinton Won — But Multiple Audiences Said Bernie Sanders Won

By Gunar Olsen
A New York Times article (10/14/15) by Alan Rappeport about who won last night’s Democratic presidential debate reported today that “Hillary Rodham Clinton was the clear victor, according to the opinion shapers in the political world (even conservative commentators).”

The Times quoted National Journal columnist Ron Fournier (“Hillary Clinton won,” 10/13/15), Slate writer Fred Kaplan (“She crushed it,” 10/14/15), New Yorker staffer Ryan Lizza (“Hillary Clinton won because all of her opponents are terrible,” Twitter, 10/13/15), Red State blogger Leon Wolf (“Hillary was (astonishingly) much more likable and personable than everyone’s favorite crazy socialist uncle,” 10/13/15), pollster John Zogby (“Mrs. Clinton was just commanding tonight,” Forbes, 10/13/15) and conservative radio host Erick Erickson (“I’m still amazed the other four candidates made Hillary Clinton come off as the likable, reasonable, responsible Democrat,” Twitter, 10/13/15). If these so-called “opinion shapers in the political world” declare Hillary the winner, then Hillary must be the winner, according to the Times.

What the Times and these pundits failed to mention is the fact that every online poll we could find asking web visitors who won the debate cast Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the winner—and not just by a small margins, but by rather enormous ones.

Seventy-one percent of participants in Slate’s online poll, for example, favored Sanders, while only 16 percent preferred Clinton. Time’s web poll of nearly 235,000 had Sanders at 56 percent and Clinton at 11 percent (Webb: 31 percent).

At Daily Kos, which caters to hardcore partisan Dems, 56 percent of nearly 22,000 participants said that Sanders won, vs. 38 percent for Clinton. MSNBC’s poll of 18,000 had Sanders at 69 percent and Clinton at 12 percent.

Sanders also showed appeal among the visitors to right-leaning sites: The conservative Drudge Report found that of more than 315,000 people, Sanders polled at 54 percent and Clinton at 9 percent (former Sen. Jim Webb got 25 percent). A poll by KSWB-TV, Fox’s San Diego affiliate, found that 78 percent of 45,000 respondents thought that Sanders won, as opposed to 15 percent who favored Clinton. The Street, a financial news website, found that 80 percent of 13,000 respondents dubbed Sanders the winner, while only 15 percent thought Clinton won.

Although these polls only represent the views of these sites’ visitors who volunteered to participate, the consistently high share saying that Sanders prevailed in the debate, across a range of websites with wildly varying audiences, is striking.

Adam Johnson, associate editor at Gunar Olsen and frequent FAIR.org contributor, pointed out (AlterNet, 10/14/15) that not only had Sanders won every online poll “by at least an 18-point margin,” he also was picked as the winner by various media-convened focus groups: “Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group and the Fox News focus group; in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters.”

Another, more rigorous gauge of Sanders’ debate performance came from an analysis of Google searches. According to Google, Sanders was the most-searched candidate for almost the entire debate. After the debate was over, he was the most-searched candidate in all 50 states.

There is one outlier in the data about the Democratic debate, but it’s one that should carry some weight, given that it’s the only poll so far ask a random sample of respondents about debate performance. This poll, conducted via automated telephone calls by research firm Gravis Marketing (One America Network, 10/14/15), found that 62 percent thought Clinton won, while 30 percent gave it to Sanders.

The poll, however, is described as a “random survey of 760 registered Democratic voters across the US”—not as a survey of people who actually watched the debate. Given that there are some 43 million registered Democrats in the country and 15 million people who watched the debate, not all of whom are Democrats, it’s highly likely that a large majority of the poll’s respondents got their impressions of who won the debate secondhand.

If they relied on corporate media to tell them about the debate, as no doubt many of them did, it’s no wonder that most of them thought Clinton won.

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Gunar Olsen is an editorial intern at FAIR and a student at Fordham University. Follow him on Twitter at @GunarOlsen.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Hillary Clinton's White House Bid Sinking — Support From Women Drops 29% in 2 Months

Non-white women appear to be the only ones sticking with Hillary... so far

Illustration by DonkeyHotey

By Karen Tumulty
Hillary Rodham Clinton is suffering rapid erosion of support among Democratic women — the voters long presumed to be her bedrock in her bid to become the nation’s first female president.

The numbers in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll are an alarm siren: Where 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters said in July that they expected to vote for Clinton, only 42 percent do now, a drop of 29 percentage points in eight weeks.

The period since the last survey coincides with the news that the FBI is looking into the security of e-mails sent over a private server Clinton used when she was secretary of state, as well as an intense media focus on her response to the controversy. The episode has raised questions about her judgment and revived memories of the scandals that plagued the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s.

The steep decline among women, sharpest among whites, is the main force driving the poll’s overall numbers, which show support for Hillary Clinton falling from 63 percent in July to 42 percent now. Her numbers among women have declined to the point where they are about even with her share among men.

As a result, Clinton’s once-commanding national lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running to her left, and Vice President Biden, who is considering joining the race, has been cut by two-thirds. Both men are now polling in the low 20s against her.

The poll suggests that the historic significance of Clinton’s campaign, which holds the prospect of electing the nation’s first female president, is being overtaken by other forces.

In the survey, Clinton received significantly higher support from non-white Democratic-leaning women, 60 percent of whom were behind her as their party’s nominee. By comparison, only 37 percent of white Democratic women said they would vote for her.

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Smartphones Defeat Corporate Media Coverups: Poll Shows Black People Returned to Reality on Race Relations

Finally, Black perceptions of the actual racial situation in the United States are catching up with reality, after years of collective delusion under The First Black President. “Black perceptions on race have swung 20 percent – from 48 to 68 percent negative – in the year since the emergence of an incipient movement against police violence.” Black pessimism about race relations is up 38% since the “’we HAVE overcome’ days of delusion, in 2009.”

By Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor

“’Good feelings’ in ‘bad’ and ‘dangerous’ times serve only to accelerate the processes of disaster.”

More Black Americans think race relations are generally bad than at any time since the Rodney King rebellion in Los Angeles, a generation ago. Whites feel pretty much the same way, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.

Sixty-eight percent of Black people today believe race relations are bad, substantially more than the 59 percent negative recorded when Barack Obama was presenting himself as a candidate for president, back in 2008. The great dip in the statistics (or peak, depending on one’s perspective), was registered in 2009, the year of Black euphoria that began with Obama’s inauguration. By April of 2009, only 30 percent of Blacks told pollsters they saw race relations in a generally bad light. Half of Blacks’ negative perceptions on race disappeared the moment a Black family set up residence in the White House.

I don’t pretend to understand what white Americans generally mean by “bad” or “good” race relations – except that it is certainly very different than what Black Americans mean, when using the same terminology. I suspect that most whites think relations are “good” when they don’t have to hear Black people complaining too loudly. The perceptions of the people at the receiving end of racial oppression are usually more reflective of racial realities than the impressions of members of the dominant/oppressor group, who in all cultures minimize the degree of harm inflicted by their group. However, the oppressed are also quite subjective in their analyses of conditions. They hope against hope, or are overcome by despair – emotional swings directly related to their perception of the forces allied with, or against, them.

The polls show two recent periods of great volatility in Black perceptions of the general racial climate: the soaring euphoria of 2009, whose effects continued through 2010; and the dramatic year-long rise in Black discontent (translated in polls as pessimism on race relations) that began in August, 2014, when Ferguson, Missouri, rebelled against the police killing of Michael Brown. In between, we see a slow but steady erosion of Black perceptions of “good” race relations beginning in 2012, the year Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida, when Blacks’ negative ratings on race climbed above the 40 percent level for the first time since Obama took office.

Percentage of Blacks that viewed race relations as generally bad, according to New York Times/CBS News poll:

July, ’08 59

April, ’09 30

Jan, ’12 37

Aug, ’12 41

Apr, ’14 46

Aug, ’14 48

Dec, ’14 54

Feb, ’15 58

Apr, ’15 65

July, ’15 68

Black perceptions on race have swung 20 percent – from 48 to 68 percent negative – in the year since the emergence of an incipient movement against police violence. There has been a 38 percent rise in Black pessimism on race since the “we HAVE overcome” days of delusion, in 2009.

“Half of Blacks’ negative perceptions on race disappeared the moment a Black family set up residence in the White House.”

Race relations, as measured by Black perceptions, are now 9 percent “worse” than they were in 2008, before Obama’s election. The objective reality, of course, is that the Black economy collapsed during the financial meltdown that reached its peak in 2009 – the very year when Blacks perceived race relations as “least” bad, at 30 percent. So deep was the “Obama delirium” in 2009, that 39 percent of Blacks told pollsters for the Pew Research Center that African Americans were better off than five years before – even though Black unemployment was hovering around 16 percent, nearly twice the level of 2004, and Black wealth had fallen to one-twentieth of whites, as evidenced by wholesale home foreclosures in Black neighborhoods. Black people’s collective (subjective) perception at the dawn of the Age of Obama, according to the Pew poll, was that “the state of black progress in America [has] improved more dramatically than at any time in the last quarter century.” Every indicator of Black economic well being crashed in 2009, yet Black folks believed the opposite.

The steady rise in “bad” feelings about the racial situation – which is inextricable from the Black economic condition – is, therefore, a good thing. Gross misperceptions, wildly misplaced optimism, and the outright delirium experienced by so many Blacks at the start of the Obama presidency, greatly weaken and disarm a people. “Good feelings” in “bad” and “dangerous” times serve only to accelerate the processes of disaster. We need more “bad” feelings about racial oppression, mass Black incarceration, late-stage capitalism, mad-dog imperialism, and the survival of the biosphere.

No More Empty Celebrations and False Optimism

The Black Misleadership Class, which for two generations has pursued its own narrow interests with no regard for the masses of Black folks, thrives on the illusion of progress, which gives the false impression that their leadership has born fruit. This perfidious class celebrated not only Obama, but also the brief and delirious “era of good feeling” that accompanied his rise, offering no resistance whatsoever to The First Black President’s corporate neoliberalism and hyper-aggressive imperial policies. “Good” feelings led to disastrous results.

The most encouraging development since the emergence of an incipient, grassroots movement against police violence – an occurrence that is inseparable from the increase in “bad” feelings about race in the U.S. – is the growing rejection by young people of a Black Misleadership Class that strives for better “race relations” (peace) rather than a thorough transformation of U.S. society (justice). These are the kinds of Negroes that study the polls, wishing most of all for an increase in whites who sympathize with Blacks (whatever that subjectively means), rather than hoping that huge numbers of Black people get mad enough to make a MOVEMENT.

If an oppressed people don’t believe they are oppressed, they will not do much of anything to change their condition. In the words attributed to Harriet Tubman: “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”


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BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

The Obama Disaster: President Flim-Flam Leads Dems to Midterm Massacre

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

“The Republican victory does not represent a shift by the American population to the right, but demonstrates the bankrupt and reactionary character of the Democratic Party and the mass disillusionment with the Obama administration. In the absence of any progressive alternative to the two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, the majority of potential voters stayed home. Voter turnout hit another record low, with only 38 percent going to the polls….Voter participation by young people fell particularly sharply. Barely one-third of eligible voters went to the polls in California, the most populous state.”–Patrick Martin


By Mike Whitney 

The White House has denied claims that the midterm elections were a referendum on Barack Obama, but the polling data shows that they were. According to a CBS News exit poll:

“Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said their opinion of the president influenced their vote… 34 percent said they wanted to make a statement in opposition to Mr. Obama, while 20 percent said they voted in support of him.”

Those differences were more stark among Republican voters “61 percent (of whom) said they cast ballots to take a stand against the current administration. (Only) Thirty-five percent of those who voted for GOP candidates said Mr. Obama didn’t play a role in their decisions at the polling places.” (2014 midterm elections look like a referendum on Obama, CBS News)

There’s no doubt that antipathy towards Obama played a significant role in Tuesday night’s bloodbath. Even so, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insists that, “Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on the name that’s on the ballot, not the name that’s not….It’s up to those individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used to their benefit in the elections.”

In other words, the Democratic candidates that went down in flames on Tuesday, can only blame themselves. While that might be a good way to deflect responsibility, it certainly doesn’t square with the facts. Just get a load of these exit poll results from Forbes:

“45% of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. It was the top issue of four listed on the exit poll ballot. Voters were generally pessimistic about it. Only 1% checked the box that said the economy’s condition was “excellent.” 70% said it was not so good or poor. 78% were worried about its direction in the next year. In another question, voters split pretty evenly: around a third of voters said it was getting better, getting worse, and staying about the same.

More voters expected the life for the next generation of Americans to be worse rather than better, 48 to 22%.” (Election Results From A To Z: An Exit Poll Report, Forbes)

What a damning survey. What a damning indictment of Obama. The vast majority of the people think the economy still stinks and that living standards for their kids are going to get a whole lot worse. And you wonder why the Dems got their heads handed to them on Tuesday? It’s because they failed on the number one issue, that’s why.

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'US Gives Too Much to Israel': That's What 6 in 10 American Citizens Think — Says Google Survey

By Robert Barsocchini
Surveying Americans about U.S. aid to Israel requires putting it into proper perspective. Given Israel’s position as the leading single U.S. foreign aid recipient (by a wide margin), as in 1989 asking the foreign aid question requires embedding relevant data to obtain a bona fide response.  When such data is included, the majority of Americans (60.7 percent) believe U.S. aid to Israel is excessive.  The major response, that aid to Israel is “Much too much” is 33.9 percent of Americans.  Some 26.8 percent believe it is “too much” while 25.9 percent believe it is “about right.” Only 13.4 percent of Americans believe U.S. aid to Israel is not enough.

The policy and political implications of this finding are stark.  Elected officials passing ever larger aid packages and supplemental spending for Israel simply cannot claim they are representing the majority interests of their constituents.  American presidents proclaiming the U.S.‐Israel bond is “unbreakable” cannot claim such a bond is willingly underwritten by U.S. taxpayers.  The finding also shines yet more light on Israel lobby organizations as the major factor coming between most constituents and their representatives and quietly working to ensure that Israel’s majority share of the U.S. foreign aid budget continues.

The survey also finds that, in particular, younger US citizens are strongly opposed to the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, and, crucially, finds that “Only the Wealthiest Americans believe U.S. aid is ‘about right’”:

The only category of Americans (47.6 percent) who believed U.S. aid for Israel is “about right” is the segment earning $150,000 or more (although even 42.9 percent in that category thought aid was too high).  The next lower income category, $100,000‐149,000 is the most vehemently opposed to aid, with 79.5 percent believing it is too high (42.9 percent responding “much too much” and 36.6 percent “too much.”)

While the Google report says the findings are “stark”, they are precisely consistent with the findings of the recent study out of Cornell and Northwestern universities, the largest study of its kind to date, which looked at nearly 1,800 individual US policy issues and found that the average US citizen has zero impact on those policies, while the wealthiest citizens essentially get exactly what they want, meaning they dictate US policy (and they largely comprise the US government).

This Google survey simply singles out one of the policy issues, which together illustrate that the USA is not a democracy, but a society in which people are allowed to choose which of two corporate-backed figureheads they want as the face of an oligarchy that dictates government policy in its own interest.

It is also worth noting here that 1) the top ten recipients of US aid (with Israel as #1) all, like the US itself, have torture regimes, 2) US law “prohibit[s] U.S. foreign aid to nuclear weapons states such as Israel that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, and 3) Obama, while repeatedly insisting the US is a “nation of laws”, requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever (among many other blatantly illegal acts).

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Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics.  He also writes professionally for the film industry.  Here is his blog.  Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities.  Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

Bill O'Reilly, Bill Maher and Islamophobia

By Peter Hart
There was a pretty heated discussion of Islam on comedian Bill Maher's HBO show over the weekend. And on Monday night (10/6/14), Fox host Bill O'Reilly decided to weigh in.

His first point was that most Muslims support Sharia law, which he portrayed as very troubling:

There are about 1.6 billion Muslims and 35 countries practice some kind of sharia law. That means they are governed by people who abide by principles of Islam that are controversial to say the least. In some places you can even be stoned to death for committing a sin.

A study published by the Pew Research Center last year asked Muslims if they favor sharia law. In Afghanistan, 99 percent do; Pakistan 84 percent; Iraq 91 percent; Egypt 74 percent; Jordan 71 percent…. So you can see that millions of Muslims think their religion should dictate what happens in society.

But "sharia" doesn't mean supporting "stoning people to death." The Pew survey (4/30/13) he allegedly read explains that sharia

offers moral and legal guidance for nearly all aspects of life–from marriage and divorce, to inheritance and contracts, to criminal punishments. Sharia, in its broadest definition, refers to the ethical principles set down in Islam's holy book (the Quran) and examples of actions by the Prophet Muhammad (sunna).

click to see full-size.

Or, as Pew puts it elsewhere: "According to the survey findings, most Muslims believe sharia is the revealed word of God rather than a body of law developed by men based on the word of God."
And Sana Saeed wrote a really great piece about the myths of sharia:

So what does Sharia actually mean? The actual definition of the Arabic term is "path to the watering hole." It consists of moral and ethical principles meant to guide Muslims towards what will nourish their soul. According to Islamic law specialist Dr. Sherman Jackson, Sharia is everything "from honoring one's parents, to helping the poor, to being good to one's neighbor."

So support for sharia law might not be all that revealing. But for Bill O'Reilly, it's a chance to draw the conclusions you wish to draw about Muslims.  The Pew poll also makes clear that Muslims do not "think their religion should dictate what happens in society." Most who support sharia law think it should apply only to Muslims, and Pew notes that "most Muslims around the world express support for democracy, and most say it is a good thing when others are very free to practice their religion."

O'Reilly's rant was intended to support Maher's Islamophobia (see Extra!, 8/13):

Mr. Maher is correct on the overall effect Islam is having on the world right now. The truth is many Muslim nations have not confronted Islamic terrorism, have not attacked violence in the name of Allah, and have not even condemned the jihad. There are exceptions to the rule, but they are few.

It's never a good idea to conflate "Muslims" with the dictators who lead Muslim countries ("Muslim nations"). But if O'Reilly looked at that same poll he found so useful, he'd notice that massive majorities of Muslims oppose religious violence:

Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam. Asked specifically about suicide bombing, clear majorities in most countries say such acts are rarely or never justified as a means of defending Islam from its enemies.

Nonetheless, he wraps up this wildly misleading rant by insinuating that while not all Muslims cheered the 9/11 attacks, a whole lot of them sure did:

You may remember that hours after America was attacked by Al-Qaeda on 9/11, thousands of Muslims, regular folks, celebrated in the streets. They were happy that more than 3,000 innocent people, including Muslims, were murdered. Again, these people are a minority, but they were not called out in any official way by Muslim nations around the world.

To illustrate this, O'Reilly plays a clip (one that is very familiar to Fox viewers) of what appears to be a dozen or people in East Jerusalem. But it is far easier to document the ways Muslims around the world showed solidarity with the United States, with Muslim leaders and scholars speaking out and clearly condemning the atrocities.

And this "where-were-the-Muslims-on-9/11" line is one's been using for over a decade. As I wrote in my book The Oh Really? Factor:

O'REILLY: "The telling event here is that faced with a violent faction using the name of Allah to kill civilians, Muslims the world over did little. There were no mass demonstrations against terrorism, no peace vigils and no organized condemnation of the Al-Qaeda criminals. In fact, many Muslim countries actually condoned the attacks on September 11 or blamed them on 'the Jews.'" (column, 8/1/02)

OH REALLY: There was a vigil in Iran shortly after the attacks: "On Tuesday, more than than 3,000 mostly young people held a candlelight vigil in Tehran for the victims of the terror attacks, closely watched by security forces" (New York Times, 9/21/01). A few days earlier (9/15/01), the Times reported that "thousands of people attending a World Cup qualifying match between Bahrain and Iran observed a moment of silence."

None of this is especially new from O'Reilly (see FAIR Blog, 5/13/14), who is careful to include this caveat:

As Talking Points stated last week, most Muslims are peaceful people. Even if they do believe in sharia law, that's a flaw in their thinking, it doesn't mean they are violent maniacs.

Whew, that's good. Though if he believes that, it would indicate a shift from a few years ago (FAIR Blog, 5/20/11):

For every Muslim in the world that wants democracy and wants human rights, there is one who doesn't. And the one who doesn't, doesn't have any rules. And it will blow the hell out of the one that does.

At least his Islamophobia is evolving.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Political Amargedden Facing Democrats and Obama in November?: Republicans Chances of Taking Over Senate Increases to 60 Percent

By Amanda Cox and Josh Katz
For the last month, we’ve been adding one or two polls a day to The Upshot’s Senate forecasting model. Today, we update all 36 races, based on estimates from a YouGov online panel that covers every congressional and governor’s race across the country.

The panel, asked for its preferences in collaboration with CBS and The New York Times, is unusual in its scope: It comprises more than 66,000 people living in states with a Senate race this year. YouGov, a polling firm, also conducted online interviews with roughly half of the panelists in previous years, allowing it to know how they voted in the past.

With the addition of the YouGov estimates to our model, the overall outlook for the Senate remains roughly the same. The Republicans appear to have a slight advantage, with the most likely outcome being a Republican gain of six seats, the minimum they need to finish with a 51-to-49-seat majority. But we, like many other forecasters, would not be surprised by a gain of anywhere from four to eight seats.

Summing up the possible outcomes, our model gives the Republicans a 60 percent chance of taking control, up from 54 percent on April 1.

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Barack Obama: The Willing Executioner — The Politics of Illusion

"Barack Obama - Chess Master?" (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)

“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.” -Harold Pinter, Nobel Acceptance Speech

“Obama is just a willing executioner. From the ruling class’s point of view, he’s the perfect figurehead because his mere appearance confuses and disarms so many. He seems to have spent his whole life trying to get chosen to play Judas. And that’s all there is in his resume.” -bevin, Comments line, Moon of Alabama

“In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively.” (In Gallup Poll, The Biggest Threat To World Peace Is… America?, IBT)

By MIKE WHITNEY
According to a newly-released Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Barack Obama’s job-approval ratings have dipped to a new low of 41 percent with a full 54 percent of respondents saying they “disapproved” of the job he’s doing. Obama’s handling of the economy, health care and foreign policy were particular areas of concern for most respondents. On health care, Obama is seen as having strengthened the for-profit insurance industry with little benefit for ordinary working people. The survey also showed “the lowest-ever approval” for the president’s handling of foreign policy. And, on the economy, the results were even more shocking; a full 57% of the people polled “believe the U.S. is still in a recession” while “65 percent think the country is on the wrong track”. Widespread disappointment in Obama’s performance has weakened his support among blacks, Hispanics and women, traditionally, the most loyal groups in the Party’s base.

There’s no doubt that Obama has been hurt by the anemic recovery or by focusing on deficit reduction instead of job creation. High unemployment, flat wages and shrinking incomes have weighed heavily on expectations, which has put a damper on consumption and growth. Gallup’s Economic Confidence index now shows a “sharp decline in the outlook for the future” …”with some 57 percent of the respondents saying things are getting worse, not better.”

Indeed, things have gotten worse under Obama, much worse, which is why many of his most ardent supporters are falling off the bandwagon. And the disappointment is not limited to economic policy either. Recent surveys confirm what most people already know, that the public is tired of the interventions, the provocations, the meddling and the endless wars. The American people are increasingly isolationist and want the government to disengage from foreign conflicts.

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Barack Obama's Record Low Poll Ratings: Deteriorating Image Could Shred Remaining Authority

Are Obama's ratings dipping past the point of no return? (via AFP)

Barack Obama's second term fumbles have pitched him to record low poll ratings and splintered his credibility with the American people. But has his presidency reached the point of no return? History and opinion poll data suggest that when reelected…