Winning The Future, One Lost Debate At A Time

In yet another WTF moment, Team Obama continues its plan to Win The Future by losing the debate on mandated contraceptive coverage.

The employer mandate, with a very limited religious exception, was announced in January.  NY Times polling from early February suggested that Obama had picked a winning issue - per question 74 of the poll, "Do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that private health isurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female patients", 66% of respondents supported the mandate.  A follow up question, "And what about for religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university..." showed 61% in support.

Buat after a month of debate, and with a more nuanced question, the latest Times poll shows that support has faded (or that the original poll overstated the support):

73. Do you think health insurance plans for all employees should have to cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees, or should employers be allowed to opt out of covering that based on religious or moral objections?

"Cover" gets 40%; "Opt-out" has 51%.  Ooops.  And as Mickey Kaus notes, even among women a slight edge goes to "opt-out".

A follow-up specifically focuses on religiously affiliated institutions; "Cover" drops to 36% while "opt-out" rises to 57%.

It seems to be the case that specifically including the "opt-out" notion in the question is shading the result.  As evidence, let's look at a recent Washington Post poll with a differently phrased question:

35. Do you think health insurance companies should or should not be required to cover the full cost of birth control for women? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

That phrasing is quite similar to the NY Times question of February, but where the Times had 66% support in February the WaPo is showing 61% support now (with 35% opposed).  As an amateur poll reader, I recall that the decision to include alternatives in a question will shade the result, which seems to be happening with the Times results.

More importantly, the WaPo follows up on religiously-affiliated institutions, and they indicate more of a gap than the Times captured in February.  Among 61% who support the employer mandate, 80% support it with no exception; 18% support a religious-affiliation exception.

So on net, 49% support the requirement that religiously affiliated institutions provide contraceptive coverage.  That is down from the Times result of 61% in February (subject to reservations about the cross-comparison due to wording or sampling technique, which are above my pay grade.)

It's hard to read this as evidence that Obama is winning the debate.  That said, the left is having succes with framing the issue - per the Times, 37% think the debate is about religious freedom and 51% think we are mooting women's rights.  Even with that modest success, however, Team Obama is not seeing strong support for their view.

Apparently if the Team Obama pollsters phrase their questions favorably they can get the result targeted within the Pelosi/Reid/Obama bubble.  But, as with the health care debacle, they may be surprised to learn that the public is not actually with them.

BITTERLY CLINGING TO THEIR TALKING POINTS:  Obama never listened in church but made the mistake of thinking no one else did, either.

Comments

[rse]

Women understand this best of all as a personal expense. BO is surrounded by too many who have always lived as parasites and they were blind to this reality.

OT-One of the reasons I know so much no one unauthorized is supposed to know is I track people and ideas. The internet is my friend. Just saw that at least one of those RTT federal grants is going to create a cloud of resources. As a practical matter won't that put classroom materials outside of the overview of intrepid parents and politicians?

Please help me understand the practical effect of creating this as a cloud. I also suspect it will not be confined to that particular state once created.

[Danube of Thought]

I'd like to see Sandra Fluke get loads of air time. I don't think she wears well at all.

[MarkO]

She displayed a fatuous grin, redolent of an airhead.

[GMAX]

Lets at least acknowledge that this election would be over but for the distaff among us ( present company definitely being excluded ). Men have quite strongly sized up ZERO and found his wanting. Women, not so much. I will leave that to others to explain, as I have to admit to be puzzled by the female mind since at least 1970!

[Westie]

Please don't tell them otherwise, let the bubble stay inflated. Govern by the poll die by the poll. Remember when Pelosi & Co. were all so hep to jump on the Occupy! train. Tools and fools.

[Clarice]

Feelings, Gmax, hum feelings, and if readers continue to praise their little princesses for things other than thinking clearly they will perpetuate this. I do think two things are working against this as a long term trend--more women are working and getting practical experience of the world and more people are getting their news online and not from the MSM which as TM discloses again today are peddling carparooni.

[henry]

Anyone with knowledge of clouds and especially why it would be preferrable or just another industry CC boondoggle or more secure if not downright inaccessible unless authorized, please help.

Cloud is mostly an IT industry buzzword. The best bet is to read "cloud" is: loaded on someone else's rented servers (many vendors including all the usual suspects) instead of buying and managing servers within the project. -- accessibility and security depend on what they decide to build.

[Ignatz]

--Lets at least acknowledge that this election would be over but for the distaff among us ( present company definitely being excluded ).--

Can't mention that the progressive project really took off a short time after 1920 without noting the correlation.

[rse]

henry-what would be the benefits for a public entity doing things that would be quite controversial if exposed?

[henry]

rse, Cloud is usually marketed as cheaper or faster to deploy than using your own data center. So any benefits beyond that must come from what is put into the cloud. Many commercial cloud platforms have very good security (e.g. payroll or sales info would not get used in the cloud if it was full of holes), so any application can be made secure. It is the same thing as as a newspaper paywall or IRS filing site, no userid -- no access.

[AliceH]

rse: in re Cloud computing. For my part, I am interested in Cloud capabilities exclusively as a document repository (includes pics, music, text, data files, etc - just not executable programs). I think of it as an external disk drive, accessible from all my devices (Laptop, phone, desktop, etc).

The pros are: 1) someone else manages capacity and performance of the storage - not a small thing right there. 2) user interfaces to store/retrieve/view etc are pretty simple. 3) costs are reasonable and based on paying for what you need/use (vs. buying a 1tb external disk drive where you might only need 250gb today but plan to grow to 1tb over time - still have to pay upfront).

The cons: you've just given someone else your data. Make sure that company is not only scrupulously reliable, but has an excellent track record for Info security (have they ever been hacked?), reliability (do they have high customer satisfaction?), availability (any outages?) and -- can't emphasise this one enough -- will they exist as a company in a year/5 years/10 years? You don't want the people hosting your stuff to go bankrupt and being forced to sell off their assets which happens to include storage arrays housing YOUR data.

All viable cloud-drive companies are going to claim they tightly control access to individual accounts, and that data is encrypted and compressed and whatnot - I suspect most are telling the truth.

without knowing more about what you're looking for, and how much effort you're willing to expend, I'd guess that using a cloud service is the right thing for your daily usage, but you'd be well served by ALSO having a local backup routine keeping at least 2 full copies of all your stuff on AT LEAST one external disk drive, and also a copy of just the really critical/irreplaceable stuff on a USB/thumbdrive (they can hold a LOT and they are as easy as it gets).

[Ben Franklin]

Uh, question, down further; do you believe the President can do something about gas prices- 54%......hmmmmm.

Low-info voters.

Alzo....It's not about religious rights cuz the same percentage says it is about womens rights/issue.

Live by the poll. Die by the poll.

[Gus]

"We can't drill our way out of high gas prices" said Captain Jug Ears.

Why not?

[Annoying Old Guy]

With regard to the RTT "cloud", the previous comments make good points. But another is that security is usually a direct trade off to ease of use. With that in mind, any cloud based system that is intended to provide data to large number of primary educators will need to have little or no security for reading or it will be effectively inaccessible to most of its target audience. I suspect it will therefore become subject to more overview by parents and other interested parties.

[Neo]

41. How confident are you in Barack Obama's ability to make the right decisions about the economy — are you very confident, somewhat confident, not too confident, or not at all confident?

..............2/18-22/09 -- 3/7-11/12
very confident...... 31 -- 18
somewhat confident.. 45 -- 31
not too confident... 15 -- 21
not at all confident 8 -- 30

[NK]

"... President can do something about gas pricess... ?"

1. reduce Federal Gov't spending and the TRILLION DOLLAR operating deficit which led to QE/QEII debt monetization and debased Dollar Value and skyrocketed commodity prices-- especially oil and gold;

2. Approve Keystone Pipeline--

3. ANWR drilling and pipeline to Barrow oil and LNG refinery;

4. Open all available Federal Land to O/G drilling;

5. EPA ends ALL fracking 'studies' ends all CO2 Reg studies;

6. Immediately grant all Gulf deepwater permits;

7. Per Bush/Cheney 2001 study, streamline oil refinery and Nuke plant siting and operation regs;

Those 7 off of the top of my head 'can does' would immediately reduce pump prices, and within a year cut pump prices substantially and long term. 'Bam has refused to do any of those, and in several cases done the OPPOSITE. I don't think those 54% are low information voters at all. They are just not ideologues such as yourself BenF. AND they will all vote against 'Bam in November.

[Jim,MtnViewCA,USA]

re: Cloud Computing
The security aspects are key. Your data stored on someone else's machine...what could go wrong? :)
Here is a link to 4 short (1 page) articles on cyber security written for the lay person. A snip from the first one to give a taste....the lawyers among us may find it amusing?

http://www.sans.org/security-resources/cybersecurity-conversations

Alan: What exactly did the FBI agents tell you?
Attorneys: They said that our files had been found on a server in another country. The server was used as a way station for sending data to a large Asian country. Off the record they said it was China.
[snip]
Attorneys: ..... what does that have to do with us?
Alan: Most law firms have very weak security, attorneys often don't pay attention to security notices and guidelines, and the important files relating to clients' international activities are usually much easier to find in a law firm's files than in the corporate files. So the question is, do you have any clients doing business in China?
Attorneys: Sh*t.
Alan: So now I have a question. What are you planning to tell your clients?
Attorneys: Telling them anything would be crazy! Can you think of a better way to destroy their trust in us than informing them that all the documents they gave us under attorney-client privilege have been stolen?

[pagar]

Because the leftists won't allow anything that is good for America.

[Jim,MtnViewCA,USA]

Off topic (has this been covered before?) how can Mickey Kaus be so scrupulous, so witty, ...and still be a Dem?
This is jacking up my whole world view....

[Sue]

I have to produce a photo id to buy a gun.

[Sue]

I have to produce a photo id to board an airplane.

[Sue]

I have to produce a photo id to rent a car.

[Chubby]

rse,

it depends on whether the resources you mentioned are for the teachers alone or for the students. For teachers only it potentially could be hard to access by parents. If the resources are for students, they would be presumably accessible at home where the parents could monitor.

[NK]

JimMtn-- personally, I believe loyalty is a fine virtue. If Mickey Kaus is loyal to the political party of his youth and is an honest critic tries to reform it, I admire that.

[Clarice]

Believe it or not (and I was flattered) I had to produce a photo id to buy liquor.

[mrt]

"Free"
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=124111

[Ben Franklin]

"and within a year ...."

Well, NK, those low-info voters think a magic wand is needed for gas prices RIGHT NOW!. You do understand their need for immediate gratification, and their penchant for simple solutions, right?

[rse]

Thanks everyone. The listed use was by classroom educators. What I have archived is unbelievably outrageous so I think greater security is an aspect.

It's interesting how broken up this all is among states. Since I essentially have lived in 2 different states for years I have been able to talk to pols in both those states. The 3rd state in where the new super and principal came from. Once I realized they were misleading the school board about the meaning of certain terms I went to that state's RTT app and copied the actual meaning of the terms.

Now I have a good idea of precisely which aspects each state is piloting. I I didn't already understand it I would never have recognized where all this is going.

To put it succinctly certain politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations would like for all of us to return to the mindset that we are subjects to be governed. Thanks for the prevention insights.

Off by internet to Europe!

[Donald]

What's the problem with simple solutions?

[Ben Franklin]

Nothing wrong with immediate gratification, either. Nothing wrong about a belief in unicorns and leprechauns.

[AliceH]

Interesting, BF. So, tell me - have I got this right?

"wrong" answer on gas prices = Low info voters.

"right" answer on mandate = evidence it's not about religious rights.

Also, about those low information... "president can do something about gas prices"... same question was asked 3 times 2004 and again in 2006 and response then was 61% to 64% (vs. 54% now). Am I to understand that more people thought Bush had more power to affect gas prices than Obama does? Hmmm... Maybe a Republican president is a better choice, then.

Actual Poll data is LUN (vs. the spin articles).

[AliceH]

My favorite question in that poll? Enthusiasm [to vote this year]. R's = 40% MORE enthusiastic than usual and D's = 29%; also those LESS enthusiastic, R's = 18%, D's 31%.

Another interesting bit: the surveyed asked who they voted for in 2008. 32% Obama, 28% McCain, and 31% did not vote!

A politician crafting their message based on popularity of an issue with THIS sample set deserves to be defeated in November.

[Ben Franklin]

AliceH;

Live by the Poll. Die by the Poll......everyone cherry picks their favs.

To cast your hopes with the fickle, low info voter, whatever the temporary hard-on, is only for your own morale; like mood enhancing parmaceuticals.

[MaryD]

NK, with regard to your post on what the president could do about fuel prices:

Steve Hayward, on Bill Bennett's show this morning reminded us that 70 different blends of fuel have been mandated in this country (IIRC, because of the Clean Air Act). Thus St. Louis and East St. Louis,although geographically side by side, require different fuel blends because they are in different states. One of the reasons that fuel prices spike in the summer is that there is a blend changeover, and more blends come into play.

This. Is. Nuts.

[Clarice]

Dr Chu swallows his own stupid words, but too late--that is too late if the Republicans weren't too late to make hay of them:
Washington Examiner ^ | 3/13/12 |
President Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, renounced his previously-stated desire to see gas prices rise to match European levels in order to motivate alternative energy research, telling the Senate today that he wants gas prices to fall for the sake of the economy. "We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Chu said in 2008. When reminded of that comment today during his congressional testimony, Chu backed away from that position. "I no longer share that view," Chu told Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, today.

[AliceH]

With all due respect, BF, that's pretty much what I said. I just included actual numbers explaining why the surface spin was not all that relevant in predicting the only poll that matters.

[Ben Franklin]

Well done. AliceH.

[Sue]

I have to have a photo id to obtain a library card.

3. The user must provide proof of identification (a valid driver’s license/picture I.D.) with a current address. If the address is incorrect, eligibility will be determined by library staff.

The best part of this story? I went to our local library's website to see if I had to produce a photo id and it was written in Spanish. ::grin:: Called the library and they said by golly, you're right. Well, duh! I may not can read it but I recognize it.

[Jane]

Ben,

Notice Ben is the king of nonsense. He never states a fact, just tries to put people down as dumber than him, which I think is pretty much an impossibility based on what I've seen.

[Dave (in MA)]

I have to produce a photo id to buy a gun.

Not if the gun is procured in a fast and furious manner.

[Sue]

Ewww...good point Dave. I revise my statement to say I have to produce a photo id to buy a gun...legally.

[jimmyk]

I'm confident almost any opinion poll about specific policy questions can be manipulated 20 percent one way or the other simply by how the question is worded. The usual trick is to ask if people favor getting something, without any mention of paying for it, or giving up something else in return.

[MarkO]

But, one does not need to produce a valid photo ID to vote for a Democrat.

[Ben Franklin]

You guys all remember how I defended Bush when gas prices were high by pointing out that the President had nothing to do with them, right?

God, you low-information neocon shills act like I'm just some unprincipled two-faced liar who says whatever is convenient to make my side look good in an argument.

[Clarice]

Exactly, Jimmy.I find talking to real people a better judge of the way the wind is blowing. I remember Bob Strauss did, too. He said he'd go to the busiest dinner in a town, order a Western omelet and just TALK to people there to figure out the lay of the land.

[Cecil Turner]

I love the argument that since it'll take ten years for oil to come to market, domestic production efforts are futile.

Of course, we've been arguing about ANWR for 30+ years.

[Clarice]

At least 3o years. And they still pull out that hoary chestnut.

[Donald]

You didn't answer my question Ben.

[Donald]

Perhaps you don't understand the forest for the trees theory.

[Clarice]

Most of the time the President Does have little control of gas prices. This administration is an exception. It announced early on its desire to drive gas prices up to the level of European ones and then set about to do everything it could--legal or illegal, --to shut down all domestic energy production in favor of green projects which enriched their friends and did nothing to meet our energy needs whatsoever.

[Jane (get off the couch - come save the country)]

I'm just some unprincipled two-faced liar who says whatever is convenient to make my side look good in an argument.

Bingo!

[Melinda Romanoff]

Clarice-

In no way does that mean he doesn't believe it, he just means he no longer will share it.

[[email protected]]

Hate to do this, but ... Returning to the subject of the original post:

Don't lose sight of how "strategic" BHO's advisors must have felt the contraceptives issue could be, in shifting female voters leftward. Dem shill George Stephanapolous asked the lead-in question on this, remember? The only problem was, he asked it many weeks ago, to the bewilderment of the debate participants, at which point he was (rightly) roundly booed by the live audience. Oops - they let the GOP read their play book. If the GOP establishment types actually were as smart as the average conservative (and not as devoid of principles and ethics as Steve Schmidt), they would have seen this kind of media-colluded fabulism coming at them, and would have been better prepared.

[Clarice]

Heh Mel-- you may be right.