THE NO-BOUNCE BOUNCE – AT 7:51 A.M. ET:  Again we turn to British reporter Toby Harnden of the Daily Telegraph for a discerning view of the strange non-bounce bounce that President Obama got after the passage of Obamacare:

To listen to the pundits and soak up what the media is saying here in Washington DC, you’d think that President Barack Obama is running at about 70 per cent in the polls and cruising towards being re-coronated in 2012.

The polls, however, tell a different story...

...Obama’s personal popularity briefly popped up over the 50 per cent mark but is now down again to 48 per cent, close to his low of 46 per cent – the kind of favourability rating which, with more two and a half years to go before his bid for re-election, is an early alarm bell.

More like a five-alarm fire.

This contrast between media coverage and the actual views of most Americans is another example of the perennial disconnect between Washington DC, where 93 per cent voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and the rest of the country. In DC, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t support the new health care law, which leads all too easily to a failure to understand how any thinking person could oppose it. And such theories as “they oppose health care reform because they’re racist“.

It’s a version of the “Pauline Kael syndrome”, named after the New York movie critic who supposedly said after the 1972 wipeout when the Democratic nominee last in 49 states: “How could McGovern lose? Everyone I know voted for him.”

Obama might get some benefit from the health bill, Harnden says, but it depends on how he uses the moment:

The political value of the health-care win is that it gives him an opportunity to change the new-Jimmy-Carter narrative that was building. But it’s only an opportunity and we’ll see how skillful he is in exploiting it. Amid all the chattering-class curve that Obama’s getting, it’s worth remembering that the short-term political benefit of health care reform has proved to be, as Politico notes, minimal.

COMMENT:  The problem with the bill is the same problem as with Obama – the more people see, the less they like.  Dick Morris, who is sometimes right and sometimes not, theorizes that Obama knows he must move to the center to restore himself politically, thus the grudging move yesterday to approve some oil and gas exploration off our East Coast.  It will take a lot more than that, though, to convince independent voters to rejoin the Great Crusade.

April 1, 2010