In Declining Approval Ratings, Lessons for Obama

Although the latest reports indicate that a compromise on a roughly $800 billion stimulus package is likely to pass the Senate this weekend, the debate has not been without consequence to Barack Obama's approval ratings. Whereas Obama had been averaging approval ratings of about 70 percent in the immediate aftermath of his inauguration, his approval ratings have since declined by approximately 6 points, with his disapproval scores increasing by about the same margin:

Post-Inauguration Day Approval Ratings

Pollster      Approve  Disapprove
Gallup         68       12
Research 2000  77       20
Rasmussen      65       30
==============================
AVERAGE       70.0     20.7

Current Approval Ratings

Pollster      Approve  Disapprove
Gallup         63       21
Research 2000  69       26
Rasmussen      61       36
==============================
AVERAGE       64.3     27.7

Now, it could be that this decline is a result of something other than the stimulus debate: the Daschle debacle, for instance. But my impression is that those stories have had little resonance outside of the Beltway, whereas the public has been following the stimulus debate rather closely.

So what has Obama learned here? There have been three lessons, I think:

1. Republicans have nothing to lose. Public perceptions of Congressional Republicans are also significantly down from their already-low levels since the stimulus debate began. But, the Republicans will gladly torpedo their own brand if it means taking Obama down with them. They are dangerous to him, in the way that a gang of rabid velociraptors is dangerous to a T-Rex.

2. Obama has to do the heavy lifting himself. Support for the stimulus dwindled when the Congressional Demorcats, who are not much more popular than their Republican colleagues, were charged with the job of selling it. The more Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the faces of the Democratic Party, the more Barack Obama's approval ratings will come to resemble those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

3. The benefits of "bipartisanship" are dubious. The public says they want bipartisanship, and a large majority of the public believes that Obama acted in a bipartisan fashion during the stimulus debate. And yet, his approval ratings fell significantly during this period.

There are, obviously, a lot of factors to keep in balance here, but more than anything else the public seems to be seeking strong leadership from Obama; they don't want him to be deferential to either Congressional Democrats or Congressional Republicans.

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Obama Hits the Road to Sell Stimulus, Steps Up Pressure on Key Senators

Today, Robert Gibbs confirmed that Barack Obama will take his show on the road to sell the stimulus to the American people. Obama has scheduled open townhalls Monday in Elkhart, Indiana, and Tuesday in Ft. Myers, Florida.

As we reported yesterday, the White House tone on the stimulus has shifted noticeably over the past day and a half to a more "impatient" stance. We suggested that the White House may consider targeting specific states where the small number of moderate Republicans live, and potentially other states where reside the bipartisan group seeking to reduce the total price tag on the stimulus from $900 billion to $800 billion.

At the top of today's questioning, Gibbs highlighted this morning's expectedly dismal monthly unemployment report of 598,000 new filers, citing an unprecedented 13-month period of job loss since the recession began in December of 2007.

Then Gibbs sent an unmistakable signal of ramping up pressure on specific Senators. "Last month the economy lost 598,000 jobs. That is the equivalent of losing every job in the state of Maine."

Hello Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

"In the past two months, the economy lost 1.2 million jobs. That's basically losing every job in Pittsburgh or in Cleveland," Gibbs continued.

Got that, Arlen Specter (R-PA)? Do you feel me, George Voinovich (R-OH)?

"In the past three months, the economy has lost 1.8 million jobs," Gibbs ticked off next. "That's the equivalent of losing every job in Connecticut, or South Carolina."

Lindsey Graham (R-SC), someone besides Barbara Boxer noticed you waving the bill around yesterday.

Joe Lieberman (I-Whatever), that's a shot across your bow too.

Elkhart, Indiana and Ft. Myers, Florida, where Obama will host townhalls early next week, are home states to Sens. Evan Bayh, Richard Lugar and Mel Martinez. These are senators that the Obama administration hoped would ultimately support the stimulus bill. Bayh and Martinez have been part of the group of Senators trying to cut approximately $100 billion out of the stimulus bill.

When I asked after the briefing about the striking state call-outs, the White House flatly denied any correlation or message-sending. Nevertheless, Gibbs' comments were clearly rehearsed, leveraged off today's expected bad jobs numbers. For example, New Hampshire has roughly the same number of jobs as Maine. Gibbs said "Pittsburgh" and "Cleveland" for his 1.2 million-in-two-months comment, but why not cite Nevada or Kansas instead? I'm sure we could do a regression model on the likelihood of Gibbs randomly citing those specific states, and I'm sure we're talking an extreme longshot, despite the White House's denials.

The change in tone continues to be obvious. Last night's speech to the Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, included this Obama sarcasm:

So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.) So -- I mean, I get carried away. (Laughter.)

Gibbs characterized the President merely as "energized" today, in terms of getting this stimulus bill onto his desk. As polling on the bill shows Republican opposition solidifying and some small movement in the bill losing popularity -- to be distinguished from becoming unpopular -- Obama's intention to adopt more campaign-style selling (this weekend's Obama for America 2.0 economic stimulus house parties, the trips to Indiana and Florida, the prime-time news conference Monday) is revealing the "restless soul" that Gibbs described today.

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On Stimulus, Democrats Beating GOP On Party Unity

There have already been 13 distinct votes on various amendments and elements related to the stimulus package; these are roll call votes numbers 37 through 49 in the Senate's official record.

So far, Senate Democrats have voted in accordance with what we believe to be the administration's position 97.4 percent of the time -- or 98.1 percent of the time if the most common "Democratic" dissenter, Joe Lieberman, is excluded from the tally.

By contrast, the Republicans have voted against the administration's position an average of 89.2 percent of the time. That's fairly unified also, but the Democrats are nevertheless picking off an average of 4 Republican votes on each amendment, whereas the Republicans are getting an average of only 1 and 2 Democrats siding with them. That's a net swing of 2 or 3 votes in the Democrats' direction -- possibly enough to get them to 60 votes when the final bill comes up for passage.

A graphic detailing the voting thus far follows in the body of the post.

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In This Corner, Sarah Palin...

On Tuesday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she was endorsing Rick Perry, Texas' incumbent governor, who is expected to run for a third term in office in 2010. Perry may face a vigorous challenge from Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is reportedly giving strong consideration to dropping out of the Senate to pursue a gubernatorial bid.

So Palin is basically picking Perry over Hutchison. But why is she doing so? Why feel the need to get involved in the race at all?

Texas is a big state and will have a lot of delegates up for grabs during the Republican primaries in 2012. Having the favor returned in the form of an endorsement from Perry would be valuable to Palin at that time.

The problem is that Rick Perry isn't especially likely to be Texas's governor in 2012. Rather, Hutchison is. A Texas Lyceum (.pdf) poll conducted in June showed Hutchison with a 36-22 lead over Perry among prospective Republican primary voters. Hutchison also polled the race herself, and -- the usual caveats about internal polls applying -- gave herself a 55-31 lead over Perry. And Perry's approval ratings are well below par, with 42 percent of Texans saying he's doing a good job as governor and 58 percent a poor one.

I happened to be watching Hutchison give an interview moments after Palin's name was announced as John McCain's VP pick in Septmeber, and she was -- shall we say -- rather nonplussed about the situation, scowling the whole time as she searched for ways to damn Palin with faint praise. Hutchison, of course, may also be eying a 2012 bid of her own -- and in the dumbed-down world that we live in, the perception may be that there's no room for more than one prominent female candidate in the GOP primary.

So this seems intended as an elbow in Hutchison's ribs. Whether this is personally motivated on Palin's behalf or there is some political calculation by which this makes sense is hard to say. But in either event, it looks to me like she's bet on the wrong horse, and the move shouldn't inspire much confidence in Palin's handlers.

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"Time for Talk Over," White House Tone Changes on Stimulus

As the stimulus bill picture takes a clearer turn toward possible Senate obstruction by Republicans unwilling to divert from the zombie-like mantra of tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, the White House is showing both impatience and signs of a more targeted approach to selling the bill.

During remarks to the Department of Energy Staff, Barack Obama said, "The time for talk is over." Today during the daily briefing, Robert Gibbs acknowledged, after a series of questions on the perceived change in White House tone toward the speed of the stimulus, that "it's fair to read impatience into that." Indeed, in Obama's penned op-ed in this morning's Washington Post uses his trademark rhetorical phrase-repetition, "[n]ow is the time."

What are the other signs the White House is gearing up to put more direct pressure on Congress to get a stimulus bill to his desk by the President's Day (self-imposed) deadline?

Yesterday, the White House released a state-by-state breakdown on the projected effects of the stimulus. Piggybacking off January’s Romer and Bernstein report, “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” the White House Estimate listed the number of jobs the stimulus is expected to create in each state.

For example, in Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins' Maine, the White House projects 16,300 jobs ("with over 90% in the private sector") over two years, a $1,000 tax cut immediately affecting 550,000 workers, an additional $100 per unemployment insurance check for the 71,000 laid off workers during the recession. Funding to modernize 38 Maine schools is highlighted, as well as 17,000 families eligible for a partially-refundable $2,500 college tax credit.

In Arlen Specter's Pennsylvania, the White House numbers are 151,700 new jobs, tax cuts for 4,910,000 workers, improved UI for 1,056,000 laid off during the recession.

In George Voinovich's Ohio, 141,700 new jobs and 4,530,000 workers getting a $1K tax cut; improved UI benefits for 666,000.

Collins, Snowe, Specter and Voinovich are significant, since they comprise the tiny club of four moderate Republicans willing to vote "No" on last night's DeMint amendment. The DeMint amendment, which 36 Republicans voted for, would have replaced all spending in the stimulus package with tax cuts. Judd Gregg, Obama's Commerce Secretary-designate, abstained. (It should be noted that Gregg's intended abstention on voting has the effect of reducing the number of votes needed for cloture to 59 as long as there remains no certified winner in Minnesota.) (Yeah, I'm an idiot.)

Specifics matter. When the public debate is between "absurdly high number X" and "absurdly high number Y," the abstraction invites easy criticism. Indeed, Republicans have held the upper hand in some aspects of the stimulus debate thus far, picking off tiny pieces such as the funding for family planning and winning smallball framing wars. By winning very specific smallball battles, Republican messaging has been able to measurably win the early battle in painting the stimulus as just a bunch of Democratic pork, as we noted last night.

As Obama and his White House are increasingly putting out signals of restlessness -- Obama's op-ed, "[t]he time for talk is over," Gibbs agreeing it's fair to call that "impatience" -- they may be willing to start exerting state-specific muscle.

Neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden have shown up personally in those particular three states (Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio) to push the specific numbers -- yet. Today, Joe Biden showed up at a MARC station in Steny Hoyer's district in Laurel, Maryland to tout the president's stimulus plan and highlight the local and statewide effects. To wit, on infrastructure: $400 million to improve Maryland highways, $100 to upgrade and expand transit systems in the state, and $150 million to invest in state water and sewer projects. On jobs and schools, the White House's statement on Biden's visit cited 70,000 Maryland jobs to be created and 138 schools to be modernized. The statement even drilled to the district level, citing 9,500 jobs created or saved in Hoyer's territory.

Obviously, neither Hoyer nor Maryland's Congressional caucus as a whole needs to be targeted. Is today's Biden visit a trial balloon, a signal that the White House is willing to go to do more road legwork, next time in a key Senator's home state? So far, the White House hasn't been willing to comment on whether such a strategy is either coordinated or imminent. Still, the uptick in Obama's rhetoric, as well as today's use of "Maryland as a case study" to push specific numbers to localized areas may be an indication it is.

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The Proliferation of "Pork"

This is the percentage of articles in Yahoo! News that when containing the word "stimulus", also contain the word "pork", broken down for each of the 16 days since Barack Obama took office:



The unflattering term "pork" is now being used about four times more commonly in connection with the stimulus as it was two weeks ago -- even though the underlying package has not substantially changed. This is what it means to lose control of a debate. Back during the halcyon days of the campaign , Barack Obama had the good fortune to go against two opponents in John McCain and Hillary Clinton who had, respectively, no media strategy at all, and a completely incompetent one. The Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, are fairly good at making lemons out of lemonade. As Paul Krugman notes, the Obama communications team belatedly seems to have realized this, so call it a "teachable moment" if you like. But as difficult as a two-year campaign was, governance is going to be much, much tougher.

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Why Barack Has a Blackberry

This was a big get. And I’m really not sure how it happened. My phone rings last night, and it’s The Man. Below the jump is a transcript.

SQ – Hello?

BO – Hey.

SQ – (Long pause). Come on!

BO – No, really.

SQ – Um, congratulations, sir?

BO – Thanks, man. Hey, listen, can you come over to the White House starting tomorrow? I’d like you to be there. It would mean a lot to Michelle and me.

SQ – This isn’t really happening, is it?

BO – Of course it’s real, and it’s me.* For one thing, my Treasury Department and I are announcing a cap on executive compensation for financial institutions receiving government assistance tomorrow. You should be there.

SQ – What’s the cap?

BO – Bonuses can’t exceed $500,000, and if part of the compensation is in stock, it can’t vest until taxpayers are paid back. I’m gonna call it “shameful” again.

SQ – First of all, you wouldn’t say “gonna”; you’d say “going to.” Second, does that really work when it’s a shameless practice? I mean, where’s the teeth? Journalists catching and shaming these execs? I bet Chuck Todd will wryly note on camera that journalists aren’t getting any stimulus and later stump Gibbs for a moment.

BO – Well, T-Geith and I, and our whole team, feel that we’ll put enough public pressure and force enough sunlight with our new rules that companies won’t be able to get away anymore with the excesses that have Americans so outraged. Remember that whole “era of responsibility” part of my inaugural speech?

SQ – Yeah, I was there.

BO – Purple Tunnel of Doom?

SQ – No, Yellow. It was nice. I ran into Paul Begala walking to the gate and accosted him for calling us “90210” before the Oxford debate. But the Purple Tunnel disaster was epic. I can’t tell you how many of your organizers who worked for you for two years didn’t get to attend your inauguration because of that.

BO – You can tell me, I’m a doctor.

SQ – Now you’re stealing my standard Airplane! quotes.

BO – Cillizza stole your line about Daschle’s Sally Jesse Raphael glasses.

SQ – Which I in turn stole from Dave Oberembt, one of your rockstar organizers. You should have put him and maybe two other organizers on the job for a week before the inauguration, no Purple Tunnel fiasco. But speaking of Daschle, can’t believe you brought that up. Today was a tough day, huh?

BO – That was a rough one. We set the stage, we even get Max Baucus to come out in solidarity, everyone was ready for the battle, except Tom in the end didn’t want to go through with it. He’s a friend. I screwed up.

SQ – That’s the second Cabinet misfire. This Richardson thing looks like it could get bigger, too.

BO – Yeah, Bill didn’t do me any favors on that.

SQ – Can I quote you on that?

BO – Yes.

SQ – Awesome. Halperin will link to it. O’Reilly will even think it’s real.

BO – Yeah, that guy’s a sucker.

SQ – You charmed him when you went on. That line about spotting him 14 in a one-on-one game to 15 was great.

BO – The guy’s in his 70s. Are you kidding?

SQ – What about your new foil, Rush Limbaugh? How many would you spot him?

BO – Does it matter?

SQ – Well let me ask you something that does. Who’ll be the new head of HHS? Health care is probably your biggest fight this year.

BO – Gingrich. Definitely.

SQ – (silence)

BO – Newt’s got a lot of good ideas, and we need to be bipartisan.

SQ – (silence)

BO – What’s wrong with that idea?

SQ – It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

BO – Even worse than when N.C State point guard Chris Corchiani said during the 89-90 season, “You know, Coach Valvano... he’s been accused of a lot of allegations...”?

SQ – Why don’t you just get Dick Cheney?

BO – Look, a really big part of my brand is showing the country how above partisanship my new administration will be.

SQ – Dude.

BO – All right, all right, no Newt.

SQ – You know, I thought you’d be a lot more eloquent. In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope and all that.

BO – The gimmick works better this way.

SQ – So, will I get a seat in the press room?

BO – If you guys had gotten Indiana right, I think that would have happened.

SQ – I knew you’d win Indiana. We were there.

BO – Doesn’t count. You’ll have to stand. There’s always 2012.

SQ – When will Gibbs take my first question?

BO – July?

SQ – Well, I want to ask why you have a mandate and all this political capital and you’re not seeming to use it. Aren’t you going overboard? I’m a blogger. All the bloggers want to know what you’re doing. The signal you’re sending is that bipartisanship is more important than using the bully pulpit, but there’s a lot of worry you’re diluting the stimulus bill, that you’re chasing a false idea that the Republican caucus will see the light if you keep appealing to their patriotism. Take a look at Josh Marshall today.

BO – Tomorrow. The premise is I called you last night.

SQ – Look at what Josh Marshall will write tomorrow. That’s what I want to ask Gibbs – how close are we to Plan B, given that Republicans are insisting on tax cuts at the expense of job-creating things like infrastructure?

BO – Infrastructure? Trying to get on Maddow? Look, Gibbs has this whole baseball analogy. Tomorrow he’s going to say we’re in the bottom of the fifth inning and there’s a sausage race coming up. Milwaukee is the reference, I think.

SQ – You carried Wisconsin by 14 points, after it was the closest state in 2004. People in Wisconsin decided the Bush tax cuts policy, escalating the income gap while chasing after a trickle-down mirage, sucked. If they liked it, they’d have voted for McCain.

BO – How about if I say when I sign the reauthorization for CHIP tomorrow afternoon: “Now, in the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis – the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can address this enormous crisis with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive. I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”

SQ – Great. Let’s see more of that muscle.

BO – So, will you swing by the White House tomorrow?

SQ – Twist my arm. Fine. Let me ask you this. What if I don’t realize that when you walk in the first door under the awning, it’s actually the Briefing Room, and if there’s already a press conference going on with a full room of reporters asking questions and you’re right near the front and people start looking at you, and you’ve never been in there before, how would you lean against the wall?

BO – Nonchalantly.

SQ – How often do you think we can have this conversation?

BO – It depends. Maybe once a week.

SQ – Well, thanks for the invite.

BO – Sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this.

SQ – Iowa! Calloused hand by calloused hand.

BO – See you tomorrow.

____
* No, it isn’t.

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The Paradox of Political Capital

If the Washington Post is correct that the stimulus bill is going to be significantly pared down in the Senate -- possibly deducting about $200 billion from its total and making the ratio of spending programs to tax cuts closer to 1:1 -- this will be viewed as a moral victory for the Republicans. I think that's a fair assessment. The President remains very popular and the stimulus bill started out that way too, although we can debate how popular it remains now. And yet -- with the important caveat that there are many more chapters to be written in this saga -- the final bill is likely to come out looking closer to what the Greg Mankiw's of the world might have advocated for and less the Paul Krugman's.

Perhaps it was inevitable that this would happen once the details of the bill became known and the Republicans began to pick over them like vultures. Perhaps the bill could have been better written. Still, in essentially passing off both narrative and literal control of the contents of the package to the Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration may have played it too cute by half. Obama is popular; Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid aren't. The trajectory of the bill might have been different if Obama had devoted a prime time speech toward selling it, with graphs and pie charts and the like. But there hasn't been a Big Obama Moment like that -- a show of force -- something that really resonated outside the Beltway. The closest Obama came, oddly enough, was during his inaugural address, but the references to the stimulus there were abstract, oblique.

The upside is that Obama himself is likely to emerge from the whole affair relatively unscathed. This might count as a victory for the Republicans on K Street -- but less so on main street, which has not been sweating all the details, and will still see a very large bill passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the White House. This brings us, however, to the conundrum mentioned in the title. If Obama is not ready to use his political capital for fear that he'll lose it, then what good does it do him in the first place?

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Jeff Gannon, We Hardly Knew Ye

I nabbed an exclusive interview that we'll be publishing a transcript of later this afternoon. Today is also the first day of FiveThirtyEight covering the White House.

Make. Announce. Type.

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Absentee Ballots Unlikely to Save Coleman

UPDATE: The Court has also ruled, apparently, that the 4,800 absentee ballots Coleman wants to have counted will be held to a much higher burden of proof. Essentially, those ballots will be presumed to be guilty until proven innocent, and will have to be advocated for one at a time by the Coleman campaign, rather than being opened summarily and counted in bulk. This will make Coleman's rate of success very, very, very low, as opposed to merely very, very low. As Talking Points Memo notes, however, this process could take a very long time to complete and could continue to the delay the seating of a Senator Franken -- which may be Coleman's principal objective in the first place.

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The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that the Coleman campaign may continue to present evidence on roughly 4,800 absentee ballots considered by the Coleman campaign to have been potentially wrongly rejected. The Franken campaign, meanwhile, has its own list of roughly 770 ballots that may have been wrongly rejected.

This ruling is a victory for Coleman: his goal at this stage, plan and simple, is to put time back on the clock by expanding the universe of ballots under consideration. Still, Coleman is unlikely to net enough votes from among the 4,800 ballots to pull him ahead of Franken.

Consider the absentee ballots flagged by Coleman for being "wrongly rejected" that were actually considered by the counties earlier this month. Of about 150 absentee ballots that, having already been rejected twice by the counties (once on Election Night and then again pursuant to a court order), were triple-checked by the counties for potentially being wrongly rejected, only 1 was determined by county officials to be a valid ballot. At that rate of success, Coleman's 4,800 ballots would turn into a grand total of ... 32 that are actually deemed to have been rejected improperly. And those ballots were reviewed at a stage when the Coleman campaign wanted only about 650 ballots to be considered. Their success rate, you would figure, will be even lower with a now much larger number of ballots under consideration.

Don't be impressed, in other words, by the sheer number of ballots under review. If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down the first three times, you don't really improve your odds of success by asking her out another 30 times. (You may, however, increase your odds of getting a slap in the face or a restraining order).

The Coleman campaign, from what best I can tell, appears to be asking for a review of essentially every absentee ballot that they believe is more likely to contain a Coleman vote than a Franken vote. But these ballots have already been evaluated once, twice, and in some cases three times, and at each stage they have been determined to have been rejected properly. As we learned during the recount phase of the process, when the Coleman campaign challenged more ballots than Franken but had fewer successful challenges, it's not the denominator that counts but the numerator, and I would guess that Franken has about has many successes from his list of 770 as Coleman does from his 4,800.

(Note: Language clarified in original post).

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The Stimulus: Still Popular After All These Weeks

I've seen it asserted, assumed or alleged in many places that the stimulus package is hemorrhaging public support and might become something of an albatross around the Obama administration's neck. While I don't doubt that the stimulus could become unpopular down the road, the there is little evidence that it is unpopular in the here and now.

All polling of the stimulus to date, in fact, has shown at least a plurality and usually a majority of Americans in support, with margins varying depending on question wording, how the pollster constructs its sample, and so forth.

The most pessimistic result for the stimulus package comes from a poll released last week by Rasmussen Reports, which pegs the stimulus as being supported by 42 percent of likely voters with 39 percent in opposition. This represented, moreover, a modest decline for the stimulus from a week prior, when Rasmussen found 45 percent of likely voters in favor and 34 percent opposed.

Rasmussen, however, has shown considerably narrower margins for the stimulus than other polling conducted during the same period. Gallup, for example, showed the stimulus preferred by a 52-37 margin, with essentially no change in support from a similarly-worded poll conducted in early January. And a Democracy Corps poll shows the stimulus with wide support, with 69 percent in favor of the initiative against just 24 percent opposed.

In short, there is some evidence -- the trendline in the Rasmussen poll -- that the stimulus has become less popular. There is no evidence, on the other hand, that the stimulus has become unpopular; on the contrary, the preponderance of polling evidence suggests it remains a course of action that most of the public likes.

Why the stark difference between Rasmussen and, say, Democracy Corps? Both are applying a likely voter methodology, whereas Gallup and most of the other polls on the stimulus are surveying all adults. I understand the argument that likely voters are the ones who matter from the standpoint of electoral politics -- but determining who is and who isn't a likely voter when there is no election at hand is a little abstract for my tastes. (Are these people who are likely to vote 2010? In 2012? People who were likely to have voted in 2008? Or what?) This is one situation where I'd trend to prefer the major news orgs' polling, as they tend to place more emphasis on just this sort of issue-based polling as opposed to the horse race stuff.

At the same time, with the Republican position having been in heavy rotation on the airwaves, it would not be surprising if the package is losing some support. However more liberal the country might or might not have become, a figure like $800 billion is never going to be an easy sell, and the sheer number of budget items included within the stimulus provides plenty of talking points for the opposition. As Scott Rasmussen argues, moreover, it is Barack Obama -- not the Congressional Democrats -- who is going to need to be the key salesperson on the stimulus. But Obama has been cautious -- perhaps overcautious -- about using his political capital on the recovery package.

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The Most Powerful Women in America

No, not Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, and Christina Romer. Instead, the most powerful women in America might be the club of four Republicans in the United States Senate: Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Snowe has voted with the Administration 91% of the time according to new Obama Support Score (OSS), the derivation of which I'll explain in a moment. This is, by some margin, the highest score for any Senate Republican and also higher than that of a handful of Democrats. Collins is second on the list, with an OSS of 72%, and Murkowski is fourth among Republicans at 70%. While Hutchison is further down the list, she is clearly angling to be a thought-leader in the GOP and is likely to be a wild card on certain issues, having voted with the administration, for instance, on SCHIP and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.



Now, then: what exactly is going on here? This is a revision of the "fili-busters" metric that we created before, measuring how often Republican Senators have sided with the administration. The difference is that we are now considering all 32 roll call votes to date and weighting them according to a relatively simple scale of importance:

5: Up-and-down votes on final passage bills; Confirmations of cabinet officials
3: Cloture votes
2: Amendments; Confirmation of non-cabinet officials
1: All other procedural votes, such as motions to table amendments

The OSS is the percentage of the time the Senator supported the Administration's position after applying these weights. (This is not necessarily the same thing as a liberal-conservative score, since it is possible to wind up to the Administration's left, although this is rarely an issue for Republican Senators).

The surprise in the group is Murkowski, who while never especially conservative, seems http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/to be positioning herself as even more of a moderate just at the very moment she has to be concerned about a primary challenge from Sarah Palin. Granted, the issues that have come before the Senate so far -- like SCHIP and Ledebtter -- happen to include a disproprtionate number of so-called "women's issues", but perhaps this is precisely the point. The GOP clicked with women, at least up to a point, in 2004, and had a very good year. They didn't in 2006 or 2008, and got crushed. The boys in the Senate since seem to have forgotten about that -- but perhaps the women haven't.

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Do the Republicans Have the Votes for a Stimulus Filibuster?

The possibility of a Senate filibuster of the stimulus package, which I argued only days ago was a remote possibility, now seems like a more tangible prospect, as Mitch McConnell is thinking out loud about the strategy. But does the GOP have the votes?

I still say most likely not. McConnell might well force Harry Reid to call a cloture vote -- but I'm not sure he can prevent the Democrats from getting the 60 votes they need if that time comes.

Of the 41 Republican Senators, 34 have made some statement on the record opposing the stimulus. That does not necessarily mean that all Republicans who would vote against the stimulus would also vote for a filibuster, but let's assume for now that McConnell has those 34 votes in the can (with one exception that we'll discuss in a moment).

That leaves seven Republicans who haven't come out against the stimulus. Two of those seven, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, have in fact spoken out in favor of the package. That could conceivably be ballgame for the Democrats, if all 58 of their members remain aligned. But, since the Democrats could potentially lose a couple of senators from their own ranks, they might require a Republican vote or two above and beyond the two women from Maine.

The five Republicans who haven't articulated a clear position on the stimulus are John Barrasso, Mike Johanns, Mel Martinez, Dick Lugar and Arlen Specter. Throw Barrasso out, who is a conservative party-liner who presumably just hasn't bothered to articulate a position on the public record. Johanns seems like a remote possibility of voting against a filibuster, but only that; although he has been in and out of meetings with the Susan Collinses of the world, he has also legislated as a conservative in his brief time in the Senate. Martinez, Lugar and Specter, on the other hand, all of whom came from states that Barack Obama won, might have a harder time voting to obstruct the package. We can probably also add Judd Gregg to the "maybe" list, whom while having issued a lukewarm statement against the stimulus, has obvious incentives these days to stay on the good side of the administration.

On the Democratic side, Ben Nelson is the most outspoken skeptic of the recovery package, while Kent Conrad has also been increasingly critical of the contents of the bill, if not necessarily its magnitude. But would they actually stand with the Republicans on a filibuster? In Nelson's case, quite possibly; in Conrad's, I doubt it.

Another issue for Democrats is Ted Kennedy's health, as the septuagenarian has yet to make a roll call in the Senate this year.

Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln are always theoretically problems, but all represent impoverished states that would tend to benefit from some of the social welfare programs in the stimulus, and none are particularly conservative on pocketbook issues. Someone like Mark Warner, who comes from a wealthier state, might actually be a bigger problem.

Still, if the Democrats are starting out at exactly 60 votes assuming party unity plus Collins and Snowe, they seem to be in pretty good shape in terms of averting a filibuster, as there are five additional Republicans votes they could conceivably gain (Specter, Gregg, Lugar, Martinez, Johanns, probably in that order of likelihood) versus only two Democratic votes (Nelson and -- for health reasons -- Kennedy) that seem to be at real risk.

Now, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there is more tangible Democratic opposition to the stimulus in its present form. But if so, I imagine those Senators would let Obama know ahead of time and work with him toward tweaking it rather than having him endure the embarrassment of a failed cloture vote. In other words, I doubt that Harry Reid goes to the floor unless he feels fairly assured about 60. I also wouldn't rule out the possibility that the filibuster fails and then the stimulus passes, but with only 53-55 votes.

But in terms of sustaining a filibuster, I think McConnell is most likely bluffing. Then again, I didn't think the GOP would manage unanimous opposition to the recovery bill in the House.

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