President Barack Obama in Bellevue, Wash. Feb. 17, 2012. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
KEITH OLBERMANN: Let’s look at the poll numbers, as I suggested, and for that let’s talk to Andy Kroll, a reporter with Mother Jones. Andy, good evening.
ANDY KROLL: Good evening. Thanks for having me.
OLBERMANN: Our pleasure. There are two caveats, I think, that really weren’t mentioned and haven’t got a lot of mention on this, particularly the Gallup poll. Romney beating Obama. Obama leading Santorum by just a point. This is registered voters and the margin of error is four either way. So, it’s a total of eight points margin of error, which is pretty high margin of error for any kind of polling. Is there — are there other explanations to it? Is there some Romney surge, or Republican surge, indicated by that poll?
KROLL: No, I don’t think there is any kind of underlying reason why this poll seems like sort of an aberration. Like you said, it is pretty squishy. We have a four percent leeway going either way.
You know, when you also look at the general trend from the beginning of this year, through the present, President Obama’s approval numbers — and his numbers stacking up against all the Republican candidates are on a slight uptick. You know, he’s had good jobless claims. Jobless claims are at a four-year low. You know, the economy is beginning to improve, albeit tepidly. Things are turning up for him in the most important places, so I don’t really think we should read too much into this latest poll suggesting that Obama is, you know, getting weaker in this month somehow.
OLBERMANN: Yeah, there was additional hand-wringing across the net today about — the president trails every GOP candidate among likely voters — the likely ones — in Iowa and in Texas, and he trails Romney and Santorum in Virginia. Are those things the White House would actually act upon or worry about or were they expecting very little out of Iowa and Texas and Virginia to begin with?
KROLL: The White House absorbs every piece of data out there, and no doubt this is getting brought into the fold as well, but we’re so early right now in the race. You know, Obama has barely campaigned in any of these states. Texas — he didn’t even win in 2008, so I’m sure they’re not too worried about Texas, a Republican stronghold.
When you look at Iowa and Virginia, the president did win those in ’08, and Virginia, obviously, is a very key swing state that’s going to be fiercely competitive, but we really haven’t seen much money. We haven’t seen much time spent in either of those two states, and really these numbers don’t mean all that much at this point. It’s the president’s — essentially his approval rating without any kind of campaigning, stacked up against candidates that these voters have seen, you know, for months and months on television and in newspapers.
OLBERMANN: Is there any indication — you were talking about the White House absorbing data. Do they have data on whether or not conservative Christian attacks on the president, like that sort of opaque one by Santorum and the anything-but-opaque one by Franklin Graham, whether they help the White House more than, in fact, they hurt them because of the energizing effect they might have on the president’s supporters?
KROLL: It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the White House hates it when these sort of bogus controversies get played out once again in the media for the umpteenth time, and they distract from, you know, the White House’s message about an economy on the mend, about winning the payroll-tax-cut fight, about President Obama getting some momentum at exactly the time he needs it. So, you know, David Plouffe and all of the other — you know, Jack Lew, the chief of staff, they don’t like this.
On the other hand, this is something that you can put in an email and send it out to your millions of supporters, and say, “Hey, look. The right is going after us again. They’re resorting to baseless attacks about the president’s religion,” which, you know, the White House is bold enough — they’ve put his birth certificate and they put all of these responses on coffee mugs and on T-shirts. So, clearly, they’re not worried about responding, and I think it is a motivating tool. It’s also a distracting kind of issue as well. So, it goes both ways.
OLBERMANN: Andy Kroll of Mother Jones. Thanks for your time tonight, Andy.
KROLL: Thank you.
