She can read polls too.

I try to react to the situations that I see, and from what I saw Obama was at the tipping point on healthcare Wednesday (which was why he was on TV, he and his team knew that), and instead of pulling back from the brink, with his Cambridge comments, he essentially plunged over the edge.

It is no coincidence, in my opinion that in the next two days after the Cambridge thing, you saw conservative Democrats openly rebel against Nancy Pelosi. MAYBE they would have done so anyway, but I don’t think so. I think Obama personally offended THEM with his Cambridge comments and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Just my opinion of course.

foobarista: I like police officers. I like teachers. I like nurses. I like fire fighters. But unions, not so much. As none of is us as stupid as all of us, unions generate “collective stupidity fields,” where otherwise intelligent individuals subordinate their own opinions to the groupthink.

Also, how many times has Obama said something and had to “recalibrate” or “clarify” it later?

*Not that I’m a huge fan of cop unions – or prison guard unions – as they’ve done much to bankrupt my home state of CA, but pissing them off needlessly isn’t real smart.

It will be impossible to “prove” that this was the tipping point for health care. However, the polls showed a majority of Americans supported health care BEFORE this incident and a majority of Americans OPPOSED it AFTER this incident.

No matter what else happened in those two or three days, Obama did NOT get his message out.

However, a message DID get out those two or three days, it just wasn’t the message Obama wanted to get out. As I said, I can’t PROVE that this was a major reason in the shift from support to opposition in health care, but I can pretty much guarantee you that change in attitude vastly changed the willingness of “moderate” Democrats in the House to swallow another dose of hemlock (after the Cap and Tax debacle) for Obama.

My read on politics is that Obama had to stop that bleeding, and his whole dog and pony show on Wednesday was dedicated to doing so, and instead of the American people waking up Thursday morning saying “hmmm, that Obama seems pretty convincing about health care” they woke up saying “Geez, Obama called the cops in Cambridge stupid? Really?”

These things matter. His numbers have dropped a few more points today. Tomorrow or the next day we’ll see the first poll results from polls taken only AFTER this incident. I suspect we will see another few points erosion in Obama’s numbers, and when you are right at the 50% line in your approval ratings, those few points can be devastating to your ability to twist arms in Congress.

I’ll be watching closely to see how things end up. But my gut tells me that Obama’s core team in the White House is telling Obama “Damn man, can’t you keep your mouth shut about shit you don’t know about?!?!”

It’s probably because, while he admitted that his original comments were counterproductive, he didn’t really apologize for them. And he’s continued to inject himself into the situation, which is the antithesis of the first rule of holes.

I doubt this will the factor that derails health care reform. Instapundit’s reports of ACORN rallies for reform becoming Tea Parties will have a greater effect, in my opinion.

It might, however, make the F.O.P. a little less willing to support him in 3 years.

We’ll see how this turns out. I’ll keep an eye on the polls, not the commentary here. Besides, Obama would never have offered his non-apology if he didn’t agree with me that this was hurting him. The question is how much damage HAS been done, and how much more damage will be done by him saying he didn’t “calibrate” his words properly.

If I were the police officer I’d be saying “calibrate? What’s that supposed to mean? You said ‘stupidly’ when ‘imbecilic’ might have been better?”

Classic non-apology behavior…

Also… you are missing a key point. This has already hurt him tremendously by taking virtually ALL of the momentum he was trying to build up on health care and putting that back to zero. If his health care bill now does not pass, this could very well be the reason why.

And if you don’t think that would hurt Obama… well, I don’t know what to say about that.

I will grant you this, it does show that Obama finally took heed of the first rule of holes and stopped digging.

Looks like some here have vastly overestimated how much this will hurt him.

I agree his initial comments were counterproductive. He has now admitted as much, and that’s what most reasonable folks were looking for.

The result was that for the next three or four days instead of stories about Obama’s health care initiative and how it’s going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, we get stories, editorials, interviews, etc. on the GatesGate thing.

In politics this is known as “losing control of the narrative.”

If it’s this easy to throw Obama a curve and watch himself screw himself into the dirt trying to hit it, we’re gonna have a long and entertaining three and a half years. And remember, this was his SIGNATURE INITIATIVE! It’s like watching a batter strike out with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series because a butterfly caught his eye. Remember the first basemen who blew the world series by letting a ball go through his legs? That’s OBAMA!!!

This is the sort of thing I have been taught in my corporate management classes. It has been pounded into my brain. “We are investigating the issue and will have a response at the appropriate time.” Etc. This is the sort of reaction that should be knee-jerk programmed into any true executive.

But it’s worse. He not only spouts off at the mouth inappropriately, but HE CHOOSES THE WRONG SIDES! He is this nations CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, and he just made a public statement that law enforcement in this country is ROUTINELY RACIST. If he HAD to make ANY statement, he should have sided with the POLICE first, NOT the accused. Who you side with in a debate says a whole lot about you as a person, and what this says is that Obama is far, far from a “post-racial” President. In fact it reveals that he has racial issues of his own.

As if that’s not bad enough, when people CRITICIZE HIS STUPIDITY, he BLAMES THE PRESS for “fixating” on his comments. Now he’s not only inexperienced and demonstrating poor judgment, now he’s just WHINING because the press, for once, is not fawning all over him.

I keep saying, this is bad for Obama. Much worse than he realizes.

But I’m enjoying the heck out of it. It is my opinion that Obama has repeatedly showed a lack of understanding of the first rule of holes. Once he’s in one, he just asks for bigger shovels.