President Obama, Political Climate and Health Care Reform

Despite some recent diminishing polling numbers for President Obama and his administration, today's Quinnipiac poll showed some interesting nuggets, hidden among all of the continued looming uncertainty on the economy and the complexity and doubt spiraling around the current health care reform initiative:

"But voters say 49 - 29 percent that Obama's policies will help the economy and voters trust him rather than Republicans in Congress 45 - 36 percent to handle the economy.

"In what might be his brightest point in an otherwise dark economic picture, more Americans believe President Obama's policies will help the economy, even if they don't believe those policies will help them personally," said Brown. "And they trust the President more than the Republicans to fix things."
From December 15 - 20, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,616 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points.

Nevertheless, a total of 91 percent of American voters describe the economy as "not so good" or "poor." Voters split 28 - 28 percent on whether it is getting better or worse with 43 percent seeing no change. The results on both questions are virtually identical to when Quinnipiac University asked them in July.

"On Wall Street, the stock market's performance has many people optimistic and economists may be telling us that the recession is over. But on Main Street, Americans think the economy is still in the toilet," Brown said.

Details here.

In a related topic, opposition to the Obama health care reform initiative comes from both left and right:

The GOP/Right: Opposes financial penalties for failure to buy health insurance. Opposes costs to business including increased taxes to support the plan. Opposes use of any public monies for performance of abortions. Opposes additional debt that will result from the health care overhaul, among other issues.

The left: Opposes absence of a public option in the health care plan (the bill provides for health care provided from a pool of corporate insurers). Absence of a
provision for public funding of abortions. Proposed bill will not permit purchase of pharmaceuticals from Canada.

Based on the previous Clinton administration's failure, concern that this will represent the last opportunity for health care reform, at a critical point where the future of the American economy depends on this reform to spur business and growth, highlights the likelihood that the administration will fashion a new approach to health care that, out of the box, will satisfy neither left nor right but will open the door for subsequent "reform of the reform" that may in fact offer economic relief and, hope and, yes, "change."