From the "You can't fool all the people..." file.

Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 6/14-17. Registered voters. MoE ±3.1% (no trendlines):

Q: Since 2000 do you think the Supreme Court has become more partisan, less partisan, or stayed about the same?

More partisan: 56
Less partisan: 9
About the same: 31
Not sure: 4

Not much to add beyond "Well, duh!"

Take a deep breath.

Reassuring words from Darryl...

After 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins 99,220 times and Romney wins 780 times (including the 149 ties). Obama receives (on average) 313 to Romney’s 225 electoral votes. Romney gains +0.2% probability, leaving Obama with a 99.2% chance of winning a hypothetical election held now.

Pretty pictures, too...

No news...

...is better than FOX News. Literally...

From the "Good news for John McCain" file.

Mitt Romney's support among Republicans is lower than President Obama's job approval rating among all Americans.

So it goes.

Sweet jeebus. PPP via John Aravosis...

-In Tennessee only 33% of GOP primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 45% do not.
-In Georgia 40% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 38% do not.
-In Ohio 42% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 37% do not.

Tough times for a blogger - they've moved beyond ridicule.

Not that I'll stop trying...

On the other hand...

...go Newt go!



Obama
100.0% probability of winning
Mean of 416 electoral votes

Gingrich
0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 122 electoral votes

From the "Hoocoodanode" file.

Another one bites the dust...

Newt Gingrich's support in the race for the Republican nomination fallen quickly since national Gallup polls of Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters in early December.

I've always figured that eventually they were bound to come around to the realization that Mitt himself is all the anti-Mitt they'll ever need.

You can't fool all the people all the time…

…or even most of 'em, sometimes. Encouraging words from Pew Research

By wide margins, the GOP is seen as the party that is more extreme in its positions, less willing to work with the other side to get things done, and less honest and ethical in the way it governs.

You may have heard…

…that Jews, black folk, liberals, Wall Street and small donors have abandoned the President, and yet...

"Campaign manager Jim Messina told a meeting of Democratic donors in Chicago earlier this month that Obama was aiming for the $55 million benchmark. But even Obama's critics think it will be more. After all, campaign officials were predicting $60 million in the days before Obama's team announced a combined $85 million second-quarter take in July."

I should have such trouble.

You can't fool all of the people all of the time…

…or even most of them sometimes. This is one of those. Via Greg Sargent...

...yet another poll, this one from the Associated Press, finds that the American people still blame Bush far more than Obama for the state of the economy, with 51 percent blaming the former president and 31 percent blaming our current one.

They didn't ask me. Make it 51% plus 1. Congressional R's take more heat than Congressional D's, too.

It's good to be reminded that a lot of folks are smarter than I sometimes give 'em credit for being.

Blame?

The Republican's can't.

The public doesn't.

So what will the "progressives" do? Matt Osborne frames the choices...

There are two ways progressives can react: (A) use the next three months as an opportunity to drive teabaggery to the margins by agitating for change with Congress as their focus, or (B) bitch about Obama some more to make their irrelevance complete.

I vote (A).

Chart of the day.

Via Nate Silver...

Survey says…

...we're right, they're wrong.

Poll of the day.

Via Yglesias, a Gallup survey that asks...

If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be Mormon, would you vote for that person?

A mere 22% said no. That the number is so small reflects a failure of civics education in America. It's worse than it looks, actually, since no small part of that group doubtless would reject a Mormon candidate because of their own religious fundamentalism, rather than for the simple fact that any religious fundamentalism, (and to be a practicing Mormon is, by definition, to be a Mormon fundamentalist) is inconsistent with Constitutional governance in the United States.

If your religious faith requires you to ignore physical science, disregard recorded history and abandon human reason, well, regardless of your other attributes, you're not qualified to lead the secular liberal government that the framers purposely designed. Every educated American should know that.

With so many fundies of so many stripes vying for the Republican nomination, it needs to be said.

Chart of the day.

Survey says, bring 'em home…

From the "Good news for John McCain" file.

Via Political Wire...

A new Gallup poll finds 45% of Americans identified as Democrats last month as compared to 39% who identified as Republicans.

The six-point Democratic edge is the largest measured since October 2009, when the gap was seven points.

Word Cloud of the day.

Republicans overrate their 2010 field...

It's a start.

Darryl has the takeaway from Public Policy Polling's new look at Maria Cantwell's re-election prospects...

Cantwell’s reasonably popular and the GOP doesn’t have anyone good to run against her.

As regular readers might know, Maria Cantwell is, in fact, wildly popular here at Upper Left World Headquarters, so any good news for the Senator is good news to me. Heck, "reasonably popular" seems like pretty high praise for any politician these days, so I'm encouraged.

We can't be complacent, though. The weakness of their bench notwithstanding, there will be a Republican on the ballot and there will be investors willing to lie, cheat and steal to secure this seat for that Republican.



Good news is good, but there's always work to do.

You can fool some of the people some of the time…

…and, apparently, about 25% of the people all of the time.

Inch by inch, row by row...

The University of Chicago's General Social Survey for 2010 is complete, and…

...despite efforts to block same-sex marriage in states across the country, more Americans support same-sex marriage than oppose it.

And it's getting better all the time...