Poll: Nearly Half Think Obama Team Was Involved In Blago Scandal
We now have our first public polling on the impact that the Blago mess has had on Obama's numbers, and the results are mixed.
A new Rasmussen poll shows that the public is split pretty evenly on whether they think Barack Obama or any of his top aides were involved with the Blagojevich Scandal: Forty-five percent of likely voters say it's very likely or somewhat likely that the Obama folks were involved, while 46% say it's not very likely or not at all likely that they were.
To be sure, it's unclear what the pollsters mean when they ask if they think the Obama camp was "involved" with the Blago scandal -- for respondents, "involved" could mean anything from having had perfectly routine discussions about the seat to something genuinely pernicious. A more fine-grained question would have asked whether people think Obama or his aides had done anything wrong in connection with the Blago mess.
Indeed, the scandal hasn't taken any real toll on Obama's approval ratings, with the Rasmussen daily tracker giving him a 65% approval rating, basically the same as where it was before this whole disaster began to unfold.
Still, the fact that nearly half are receptive to the idea that Obama or his aides are linked to the scandal, however vaguely, suggests that there's a lot riding on the success of Obama's plan to disclose any and all contacts between the two camps in the next few days.
What we do without Rasmussen?
December 15, 2008 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
| President-elect's ratings are unscathed by scandal swirling around Illinois governor, according to a new Post-ABC poll
December 15, 2008 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Meh - the inauguration and all the pomp and circumstance of that, combined with the economic crisis, will wash away any memories of this.
December 15, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dream on.
The GOP is like Captain Queeg with this thing, trying to reanact a triumphant episode of his past by instigating a wild-goose chase for a nonexistant key to explain the pilferage of strawberries from the officers' mess.
Back in the 90s, they avoided having to confront the growing intellectual rot and factional tension within their party by means of Whitewater. They really think they can do the same thing with Blagopaylosah. They're wrong, of course, but they'd rather chase wild geese than confront their own problems.
December 15, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let them chase, Steve, let them chase.
The whole response to the auto bailout will have far flung and deep repercussions for Republicans. If they want to obsess over this non-scandal, said obsession will provide some extremely useful campaign material in 2010.
Amazing that even Bill Kristol recognizes the coming debacle for the Republicans over the auto bail-out measure.
December 15, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, agreed. See my response to Jonze below. Just saying this goes out when Obama stamps it out (which, I am confident, he will do), not because other stuff puts it out of sight and out of mind.
December 15, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not necessarily... as is always the operative case, it's what the proverbial MSM does with it, that counts.
I think we can bet the college fund that this "46%" business will be chyroned to death on the cablenets, starting today, and lasting at least until Inauguration Day. If you don't think that will create some CW that Obama is "just as dirty as Blago"... well..!
December 15, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're building a sense of drama with this post that I think is totally unwarranted.
This poll is a freaking joke. I would be in the 45% that thinks the Obama people had contacts with Blago too. Big deal.
December 15, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought I was pretty aggressive in pointing out the absurdity of the question...
...but nonetheless, there is a lot riding on the upcoming disclosure. don't want this vague sense of "involvement" to harden into something more negative.
December 15, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
'cept that regardless of how open Obama is there is still the right wing nut jobs and neo-partisans that will continue to try and push the story that somehow, Obama came out of Chicago politics with tinges of corruption forever embedded in his DNA.
Good thing about this is for the most part, the Holder story along with other appointments has gone on the back burner a bit while the right wing is busy pushing talking points on the Blago story, working the MSM and the rest of the U.S. into a feeding frenzy.
December 15, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
In other words, you want him to prove a negative.
There is no there, here.
December 15, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I totally agree Greg. Obama's letting this RIDE way TOO long already. WHY? There's no excuse to not get the FACTS out there --- unless there IS something to hide.
December 15, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Letting what ride? What else is he supposed to do or say? And you agree with Greg about what? That the question is absurd? Greg's pretty clear about pointing out the question's ambiguity. How is Obama supposed to respond to madeup bullshite?
Remember the guy this summer who was going to prove he did coke and had sex with Obama? How the fook was he supposed to respond to that?
He could spend his whole fookin life "responding" to everything that's "out there". Why bother?
December 15, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
If I didn't know the poster, I would think this was snark.
December 15, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
True. As long as you add some B-Movie soundtrack to the drama build-up, I'm cool with it.
December 15, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Co-sign. Rasmussen ? Really ?
December 15, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I share this sentiment. The title of your post suggests a stark difference from what expand upon in your post and I find the entire matter an expression of needing to find more real news to discuss.
December 15, 2008 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama has handled it rather poorly though. He seems to believe it he doesn't talk about it it will go away. There is nothing wrong with Emanuel talking to Blagojevich about who Obama would support filling his seat - actually it makes the most sense given that Obama was elected by the people of Chicago to that seat, meaning they trusted his opinion. I'd have hoped Obama would have came out and said as much, saying that there is nothing unbecoming about offering his advice and that's what he did and that the wiretaps showed that Blago didn't think too highly of Obama because he wasn't offering anything other than his opinion.
Obama is letting this non-issue become an issue.
December 15, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
It was a statewide seat. Yes, it is not uncommon to think of Chicago as the only thing that matters, but there really is a whole state South of I-80 called Illinois. :)
December 15, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
...having lived in Carbondale for 5 years, most people (especially politicians) in Cook County have no idea there is a "rest of the state."
December 15, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh for God's sake. There's never been anything Obama did that was done fast enough to suit you.
One thing that Obama's figured out is that the sense of urgency that gets generated around stuff like this is ficticious. His experience (and, perhaps even more important, the Clintons and Al Gore's negative experience) has taught him that its far better to take the time to collect all the facts, make sure you've got them all correct and documented and searched every closet for skeletons and than drop it all on the MSM in one big, but clean, topic-exhausting dump than it is to dribble out facts piecemeal as soon as you've discovered them.
The dribble, dribble method, which was what the Clintons did with Whitewater and what Gore did with that silly fundraising thing, a) allows the MSM to construct a narrative out of incomplete facts (which is far more damning and destructive than a narrative constructed from pure speculation), b) inevitably puts you in the position of saying something wrong which you'll have to walk back which the MSM will then attribute to either incompetence or dissembling and, c) worse of all generates a new stream of Troubling, Troubling Unanswered Questions.
Back during the campaign, before Supercalifragilistic Tuesday, there was much impatient wailing and gnashing of teeth and foot-stamping insistance that if Obama didn't make a clean breast of everything there was on Rezko right this minute, he'd be doomed, doooooomed. And, of course, there was a further insistance by the amatuer campaign managers in the blogosphere that he absolutely had to answer each and every question seritum, as each was thought up.
Well, instead, he attended to the business at hand--winning rapid-fire primaries--and, once he hit the start of that that long gap before the Pennsylvania primary, he did the exhaust the story presser with the Chicago papers. What he didn't do, was dribble out facts in a way that allowed the MSM to write novels about Rezko rather than stories about his campaign. Rezko was relegated to fringe-obsession status from that day on.
So, yeah, I say let the MSM and the GOP go ahead and hyperventillate themselves into seizures of impatience if they want and then stamp out their hypoxic hallucinations with one big seamless data dump at a moment of his choosing, not theirs.
December 15, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Word.
December 15, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo! I am standing on my chair clapping.
December 15, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Typing wuth your toes?
December 15, 2008 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just the ones on my left foot.
December 15, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lol. Thumbs, actually. And damn they're sore now.
December 15, 2008 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is inherently "involved", it's his Senate seat that is at the center of the most recent controversy. I'd answer yes he is involved.
I don't think he did anything unethical or illegal or else Blago wouldn't have called him a motherbleeper.
Stupid question.
December 15, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
This sounds more like a Faux News poll. One of the most basic principles of polling is to avoid ambiguous words like "involved". So either we have to assume either that an experienced pollster like Rasmussen doesn't know any better or that the wording was deliberate. This one isn't too hard.
December 15, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. And don't think for a moment that Rassmussen didn't know exactly what it was doing. This was a poll strictly designed to generate a result that would aid Rassmussen's partisan cohorts and, not even a little bit coincidentally, get the Rassmussen brand into the MSM.
December 15, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not the least bit surprised with these numbers, flawed though the question might be.
The media has been flogging the "He's been cleared but questions remain...." and "Why hasn't he been more forceful??!!?" lines for one week at this point.
We're just putting to bed an Administration that responded to pretty much everything by stonewalling. We're moving to one run by someone who takes time to think about his response, and, lest anyone forget, has promised to releast a report on this freaking non-issue. Obama is a measured individual in a time built for faux scandals covered in microscopic detail 24 hours a day.
The Bush Administration has left us a ton of ills to recover from. The media has, as well. This has resulted in, I think, many of us viewing Obama perhaps in an excessively positive light. But it has also impaired our ability to judge what is an appropriate response and what isn't.
He's not directly involved, and yet many are criticizing him for not being more transparent about this non-involvement. Take a breath, people.
December 15, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The media has been flogging the "He's been cleared but questions remain...." and "Why hasn't he been more forceful??!!?" lines for one week at this point.
Exactly. The failure here is on the part of the media, not Obama.
And, sadly, Sargent and Kleefeld fall into the same trap when they falsely claim that "there's a lot riding on the success of Obama's plan to disclose any and all contacts between the two camps in the next few days".
December 15, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
how so? how does the media being to blame for flogging the story lessen the importance of getting the PR around the disclosure right?
I'd argue that the reverse is true: The media's willingness to tar Obama by association makes it more, not less, important to get it right.
December 15, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it's because the media shows no inclination to be satisified over any disclaimer or statement by Obama with respect to this matter.
Why rush something out when the MSM is going to continue the innuendo campaign?
December 15, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very good circular reasoning. No wonder shrub got away with all he did.
December 15, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd argue that the reverse is true: The media's willingness to tar Obama by association makes it more, not less, important to get it right.
That assumes that there's something Obama could say or do that would suddenly make the media go "well, guess we were wrong to accuse Obama. Nothing to see here!".
And really, when has that ever happened?
December 15, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
These last few comments capture the essence of the problem here quite well.
December 15, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Had Blago resigned right away I dont think this story would have half the shelf life. Him not resigning gives the impression that some back room wheeling and dealing is going on. Right now Blago is fu**ing this up for BO. This is press nobody needs right now.
December 15, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aided and abetted by people like David Gregory, Campbell Brown, Lynn Sweet, Contessa Brewer (hell, pretty much anyone on daytime cable news shows), David Gergen, etc.
December 15, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama will be fine. Once all the info is released and then there is the next 2 weeks where everybody will be focused on the Holidays, Christmas, New Years. People really won't focus on the news once again until early January when kids go back to school.
December 15, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know...There will be testimony and a trial with a couple of perp-walks, Rezko in a jumpsuit testifying against the Governor...Obama staffers will end up on the stand, could be as high as Rahm (not that he did anything but you know he'll end up being questioned by one side or the other). This will be in the news for quite awhile.
December 15, 2008 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
CT, as always, hits it outta da park..
One question: if the "measured" Obama intends to "release a report", each and every time a faux scandal is manufactured and its steam has a chance to peter-out a little (I'm estimating, this will happen on the order of every 90 days; possibly more in an actual Dem Administration)...
... how long do you think it will be, before the media mavens get hep to the jive, and realize how they're being handled? Will they then start busting the Obama Administration for, essentially, the crime of not being passive, Clinton era-type tools?
December 15, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody is messing this up but Obama himself by keeping mum on the issue.
As others have said, there's nothing wrong with discussing possible senate replacements. If that's all that was said, or if a lawyer is needed then just TELL US --- quit ignoring it.
December 15, 2008 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why must Obama respond immediately and at length to every media hype-job?
December 15, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody cares. Look at the approval ratings.
Nobody. Cares.
Obama knows what matters and what deserves his attention. He will do what he can to assist Fitzgerald in his investigation, but he's not going to play along with conspiracy theories. If that bothers conspiracy theorists like yourself... then tough shit, because nobody with a life cares.
Better to let the whackos discredit themselves than to give them the dignity of a response.
December 15, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Has anyone considered maybe Obama's staff was directed by Fitzgerald's office to not speak to the press due to the fact it is still an ongoing investigation?!?
That was my first guess as to why Obama's staff was delaying releasing too much information and why Obama initially said he didn't directly speak to Blago and that was all that was appropriate to speak about the case at the time.
December 15, 2008 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
If this were Bush or any other Republican we'd be demanding answers from them, why are we less required to give answers in a timely manner?
If Fitzgerald has given orders not to discuss issue then SAY SO. That's all I ask.
December 15, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if the federal prosecutor had already cleared Bush and his staff of any suspicion, I wouldn't feel the need to press the issue any further, knowing that the federal prosecutor has access to the facts and is making a better informed judgment as my representative in the judiciary.
December 15, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ask and you shall receive:
December 15, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since Obama's favorable poll numbers haven't dropped, I just wouldn't worry about this poll because who knows what the word "involved" means.
The only good thing with this poll is that perhaps this will light a fire under the Obama team's butt to get going and release all the information they have.
The only problem I have with the Obama team's response is that from day 1 they should have said that of course there was communication between his staff and Blago's staff over the Senate seat as there should have been.
December 15, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed! The LACK of answers is what the problem is.
December 15, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was a dumb question.... Ras should of asked did Obama or his team did anything illegal because I'm sure Rahm involved.... It's a loaded question, i don't think Obama or his team did anything illegal, but i guess i would fall in with the 45%
December 15, 2008 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even I who voted for him and probably would again am starting to wonder WHY are they not releasing the facts?
December 15, 2008 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you ever considered that maybe they're taking the time to make sure any information they release is complete and factually correct? The absolute WORST thing they could do right now is come forth with info and then have something come to light later that contradicts it. It would be a disaster and set up "Whitewater Vers 2.0".
I understand everyone's panties are in a twist over this, but I think you should give them some time to get their ducks in a row.
December 15, 2008 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why do you feel the need to tell us you voted for him, and "probably would again". Somethin' don't smell right.
December 15, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well tell me, then exactly how would you go about gathering those facts and how long to you think it would take to execute your plan?
No idea? Well here's what I'd do:
a) get the phone logs of the transition team's landlines and the call records from every member's PDA and/or cell phone and comb them for contacts with Blago or with anyone known to have been named in the indictment between the end of November and last week;
b) review all the mail server and PDA mail records for contacts with domains associated with Blago or anyone else identified in the indictment during that period;
c) and, oh yeah, look for old-fashioned paper records;
d) review all the above and try to digest it into some kind of a who did what when timeline; then, and only then,
e) personally interview each of those people about their contacts, possibly with a transcriptionist present; and then,
f) draft a report collating all the relevant documents and reporting on what is known.
And that's just off the top of my noggin. You think that can be done in a week? Bullshit. Going flat out with three or four lawyers and a couple of paralegals working full time, a good law firm could get it done in three weeks, maybe.
And that's how you've got to do it. If they half-ass it, they will miss something that will come back to bite them in the ass later. Either they'll confidently make some statement that they have to walk back later when someone leaks the undiscovered facts to the MSM or there will be some minor omission that, because it was omitted, is turned into the smoking gun that proves there's some kind of cover-up going on.
December 15, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
A new ABC/WaPo poll out today from December 11th to December 14th shows that Obama's approval ratings have not changed. Obama is seen as honet and trustworthy at 67% which is unchanged and has a 76% approval rating on how he his handling the transition so far.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2008/12/obama-the-trans.html
December 15, 2008 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg should update with this info......
December 15, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink