Experience. He makes it clear that’s his personal prediction, not his model.
That’s exactly how Romney convinced himself he was going to be President. 
Rothenberg, unlike Romney, is a professional who has been doing this since the Jurassic age. Plus he’s disinterested. Wang has made a prediction. Rothenberg has made a prediction. Let’s see who comes closer to being right.
So it’s not his policies, it’s the ‘optics.’
Whatever. I rarely give a shit about the optics.
It’s his obsession with optics that creates the problem. If I merely disagreed with his policies, but felt the man was honorable and a leader, I’d be okay with him.
BTW, check out this ABC poll. It shows how positively ugly public opinion about the President has gotten:
The thing that tends to bug me about the bubble that seems to surround SDMB is that even though my views of the President tend to be much closer to the general public’s, I’m the one who is out of step. At least here. Even if Dopers disagree with the public’s assessment of the President, they would do well to at least argue why the public is wrong.
Here’s ABC’s more complete story on the poll, which asked about everything from the President’s leadership, to questions in Syria and immigration.
It’s the incredible non-facty nature of many of your views that are criticized. Whether or not they’re shared by many is irrelevant.
We do this quite often.
Please direct me to these arguments. Admittedly, I don’t read the entire board, so maybe I’m missing the articulate defenses of Obama’s record. I find that it’s usually just assumed he’s a pretty decent President, and anyone who says otherwise seems to have the burden of proof on them.
They’ve been right under your nose. Things like ‘the ACA is, so far, mostly successful in its goals’, and ‘the measured and cautious response to ISIS and other conflicts abroad is appropriate’.
Neither of those arguments address the specific beefs the public has with both of those policies. In the latter case, there isn’t a single policy of inaction that cannot be portrayed as “measured and cautious.”
As for ACA, what the public has always been concerned about more than anything is the effect of the law on their own health care. But I understand, the President had to lie about that and his supporters have to call that a good thing about the law. Which would be all well and good if those same posters could simply admit that the public is a little miffed about being lied to for our own good.
Even you can’t seem to warp your head around the idea that the President’s unpopularity isn’t merely some transient thing that happens to all presidents. Sure, every President has been in the 40s at some point in their Presidency. He’s been there for most of his Presidency and is still trending slowly downwards. Barring him changing his stripes completely and becoming a strong and decisive and straight-talking leader, he’s not going back up.
“The public” doesn’t have any specific beefs. Polls don’t (and can’t) really measure “specific beefs”.
The ACA has helped far, far more people’s health care situation than it has harmed.
That’s not an accurate representation of most Dopers’ defense of the President.
Cite that he’s still trending downwards? And if you’re just talking about under 50%, then perhaps. But he hasn’t been in the low 40s for “most of his Presidency”.
Further, polling outside of political campaigns just doesn’t mean much. Truman polled very low through much of his presidency. Now, people think of him as a pretty solid president. You know as well as I do that if the ACA continues to be as successful as it has been so far, eventually it will get popular, and will be what Obama is best remembered for (as far as political achievements).
[quoteBarring him changing his stripes completely and becoming a strong and decisive and straight-talking leader, he’s not going back up.[/QUOTE]
Just bad opinion silliness.
True, but it usually doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. “ACA has achieved most of its goals” is equally non-specific, since there was never an official list of goals to be achieved, other than the coverage goal. That’s A goal, not most of the goals, so what are the other ones? And which ones were not accomplished? If the public still thinks ACA needs fixes and thus disapproves of it by a substantial margin, then what is the problem and why isn’t the President trying to fix it?
Which was not what was used to sell the idea and not what most people cared about. If the public had primarily cared about expanding coverage, then there would have been no need to promise it wouldn’t change their current insurance other than to make it better and cheaper. This was the primary argument made to sell ACA. So it shouldn’t be surprising that this is the primary goal as the public sees it, and why they disapprove of the law.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was. Most Dopers don’t really want to think of the selling the law as dishonest. But it was. With so many liberal Dopers wagging their finger at us conservatives to understand why we lost the last two Presidential elections, it would be wise for liberal Dopers to also seek to understand why things aren’t going well for their side. The first thing they should do is realize the huge disconnect between what candidate Obama promised to be as President and how he’s actually governed.
It sure means a lot for Democratic candidates trying to keep their jobs in 2014.
And even when an election isn’t just on the horizon, your approval=political capital. If OBama had 60% approval ratings he’d find a much more pliable Republican Party. At 40%, they can safely ignore him. As can Democratic Congressmen if they so choose.
As for him trending downwards:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
Dude. It’s over.
You certainly can be the last Japanese soldier in the island cave if you like, but it does come at a price.
If it was over, it wouldn’t be a factor in the current election. If you mean that it’s done and isn’t going to be undone, I’d say that depends entirely on what Americans actually want done to “improve the law” and whether or not that makes the law viable. If the fixes they want would actually gut the law, then Republicans can get the best of both worlds: effective repeal without having to take responsibility for the collapse of the law. “We were just giving the voters what they asked for!”
For example, one thing that is crystal clear and all sides seem to agree on is that people want to keep their current insurance. What if a GOP Congress passed a law permanently grandfathering all current health plans and the PResident felt compelled by his own statements to sign it? What would that do to the law?
Japanese soldier it is, then.
It’s not really a factor in the current election. Republicans have mostly stopped attacking it as a general election issue.
It’s certainly less than in 2010, but it’s still there. It’s come up in debates and most Democrats are still unwilling to come out and say they support it. There are still ads running showing people who lost their health insurance or paid more.
I can’t tell you whether these ads will be effective or not, but Democrats clearly do not yet see this as a winning issue for them and Republicans do.
It isn’t going to be repealed, and you’re not going to replace it. Facts.
It’s not fact, but I’ll concede that it’s unlikely at this point. However, the public overwhelmingly wants changes to the law and Democrats have universally acknowledged(except for the President) the need to change the law.
What those changes are will go a long way towards deciding whether the law works or not. If Republicans control Congress, they can gut it even if they can’t repeal it, and they can do it with the public cheering them the whole way.
Even if you stand firm in your view that the law won’t be repealed, you agree the law will be changed, correct? And deciding in what ways it will be changed will be in large part dependent on whether Republicans or Democrats control power in DC.