The Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up questioning of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan Wednesday night, but this week’s hearings have done little to improve voters’ perceptions of the former Harvard Law School dean.
Next week is likely to be a big one for Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if the Obama administration moves ahead with its threatened legal challenge of Arizona’s popular new immigration law.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of U.S. voters agree that it was appropriate for President Obama to fire America’s top commander in Afghanistan this week, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Will he or won’t he – leave the Obama White House soon? That seems to be one of the biggest questions surrounding the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, these days.
They’re key players in two of the federal government’s largest concerns – the Gulf oil leak and the new national health care plan, but a sizable number of U.S. voters don’t know who they are.
Forty-two percent (42%) of U.S. voters now believe Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should not be confirmed following the Senate hearings scheduled to begin next week. That's up nine points from the week President Obama announced her nomination and the highest level of opposition to date in Rasmussen Reports tracking of the Kagan nomination.
Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters now say President Obama is doing a good or excellent job handling national security issues as he prepares to discipline his top commander in Afghanistan for insubordination.
A disappointing government jobs report last month shows there’s still a long road ahead to righting the nation’s economic problems, and voters are slowly shifting the blame for those problems away from the previous administration.
Though the vast majority of voters remain confident that Elena Kagan will be confirmed by the Senate to the U.S. Supreme Court, the number who oppose her confirmation has risen to its highest level to date.
Voters express only modest concern and hardly any surprise about the secret job offers made by the Obama White House to Democratic politicians in Colorado and Pennsylvania in hopes of getting them to drop their primary challenges of incumbent senators.
There is plenty of chatter in opinion columns and places where political junkies gather about how the Gulf oil spill is hurting public perceptions of President Obama. Some are calling it this president’s Katrina. Others have compared it to the Carter-era hostage crisis.
When tracking President Obama’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis, and the results can be seen in the graphics below.
