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First Read is an analysis of the day's political news, from the NBC News political unit. First Read is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC Political Researcher



Washington Post/ABC poll

Posted: Sunday, August 19, 2007 8:56 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: , ,

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
DES MOINES -- In the local ABC affiliate’s coverage this morning, they revealed the new Washington Post/ABC poll that has the three front runners in a statistical dead heat. Obama leads at 27%, Clinton and Edwards tie at 26%. Remember that during the GOP debate, the Republicans were introduced by their poll numbers. Expect the same thing and for Stephanopoulos to try and draw them out on distinctions between each other.

Expect the Democrats to try and draw those distinctions as they have in the endless round of forums and debates they have participated in in the past two weeks. By the way, Obama’s campaign posted on its Web site yesterday that Obama is putting a cap on how many more of these debates and forums he will attend. He will only attend the five more DNC sanctioned debates that are already scheduled.

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This isn't a new poll these are the numbers from two weeks ago. It is scary how much all over the place polls are especially with Clinton's and Obama's numbers. I suspect it has to do with Obama polling well in the counties close to Illinois...

Eight more debates are enough in my opinion...
This is just ABC retreading their numbers from a couple of weeks ago.  I realize media outlets need to recoup the costs of polling, and therefore give prferential treatment to their own polls, but this is just silly.  Re-running an old poll after two weeks as news is dishonest corporate schilling, not reporting.
Little poll pushing here? Funny how we don't see much about the actual latest poll (Hart) that is more in line with other polling.

Always a fine line between reporting the news and creating the news I guess.
It'd be nice to see common sense trump common wisdom as interpreted by the MSM. I always suspected that Hillary is a tad too brassy for Iowans. Obama may be exotic, but he's midwestern.
Under Senator Clinton's health plan, will I as a taxpayer have to pay
for the health care costs of people who choose to lead unhealthy lifestyles, drunks, druggies, smokers, hedonists, gluttons, risk junkies?

How does she propose to bring down the costs of health care in the United States? She can claim that she will, but I see no even one practical solution to reduce the costs from her.

I do understand that a small percentage of the population has mental health problems or in general a low IQ and therefore cannot take care of themselves or make all good decisions in life, and a safety net is needed for such individuals only. But I do not see the points of the government providing health care to everyone. People should learn to have some responsibility.

It is not that mandating health care for everyone is in any way going to bring down the costs. The only way to do that would be:

1) Bring down the amount of lawsuits so that doctors can stop practising defensive medicine.

2) Bring about a fundamental change in medical school and residency training to reflect the reduced risk of liability once the above is accomplished.

3) Make sure the smartest and best people go into the profession by assuring them adequate rewards for their work and have less incentives to add unnecessary costs and procedures.

Other things like computerizing components of health care, increased public education regarding health care issues, more funding for research into evidence for efficacy / best practices can help bring the costs down, and are already being implemented to some extent, but it will be critical to implement the above three strategies to make a significant dent in the costs and effectiveness of health care.

Another option could be to establish a two tier health care system where the government provides a very basic level of health care safety net for all and anybody who wants more shal have to pay on his/her own.

Regarding SCHIP, I think it is not a very good idea. The responsibility for children should be on the parents and not on the state/government. People who choose to bring children into this world should make sure that they have the means to take care of them before they do so.

Why should I have to pay for the children of stupid idiots who breed like worms and then are unable to take good care of them? I understand that it is not the fault of the children, but I feel their parents should somehow be held accountable. I know that this sounds so politically incorrect in todays environment, but I am fed up of this nonsense. Maybe the "Utopians" had the right idea after all.


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