My trolls tell me that President Obama’s upcoming rally in Seattle is an act of desperation, and that nobody is more unpopular around here these days than the president, except, perhaps, Gov. Chris Gregoire.
Maybe. But I’m just not feeling the gloom and doom right now, especially with the latest SurveyUSA tracking poll showing Obama’s approval rating jumping 12 points in Washington state last month, rising from 40% to a comfortable 52%. That’s Obama best showing since January, and represents a 24-point swing in the margin, from 16 points under to 8 points over.
Add to that the new CNN/Time poll that has Sen. Patty Murray up 51-43% over Dino Rossi, plus the Elway Poll that showed Washington Dems holding a 46-37% advantage in the generic congressional, not to mention the sudden tightening in WA-08, and you gotta wonder if the tide is shifting, at least in this corner of the country.
Or, perhaps, there’s something to Elway’s effort to distinguish between automated polls like Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, and live interviewer polls like his. As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.
I know there have been some polls that show Democratic seats at risk in WA-03 and WA-02 (and allegedly even WA-09), and we’ll certainly give back some of our recent legislative gains, but apart from that, there really isn’t very much hard evidence to suggest that Washington Dems should brace themselves for a red tsunami of the likes that swept them from office in 1994. At least, there’s not much evidence from this momentary vantage point some three weeks out.
I love the stench of right wing troll desperation in the morning…
Their tsunami is more like tinkling in a kiddy pool. And just about as useful.
I think the quality of Elway’s polls is enhanced by the fact that he uses the actual voter rolls to identify registered voters and actual voting habits to identify likely voters.
Also how many refusals are you going to get on an automated poll? I know you can potentially get a bigger pool of voters by doing the auto-call and survey but it is darned hard to keep people on the phone to complete a survey. If you can just hang up and not hurt anyone’s feelings when you are tired of the questions then you have an incomplete survey. The larger number offsets the issue somewhat, but it could also be that people with the strongest opinions stay on the line to start and complete an auto survey and so one could argue that the results are skewed by that.
Well, check the Times’ headline this morning. Polls are confusing because they are not all in agreement. Oh the poor voter.
Obama’s at about the same place Clinton & Reagan were were at at this time in their presidencies.
I expect my ballot in the mail today.
It’s going out THE SAME DAY!
VOTE!
Running scared in the 5th :)
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs.....rict/#more
All 50 state attorneys general are calling for an investigation of the mortgage servicing industry. And that tells you how bad things are in the financial services sector — any time Rob McKenna is willing to investigate the business practices of an industry that has poured rivers of cash into Republican campaign coffers, you know it’s gotta be a slam-dunk, high-stench case.
The so-called “robo-signing” scandal is rapidly spinning out of control. Yesterday, Bank of America and several other large nationwide lenders suspended all foreclosures while they try to figure out how to extricate themselves from the potential legal consequences of having committed fraud on a massive nationawide scale.
In case you haven’t been following it, “robo-signing” refers to the bank practice of using automated procedures to generate foreclosure legal documents filed with courts for the purpose of taking people’s homes away from them. These automated procedures mean the facts of individual cases are not reviewed by any human person and the legal documents typically contain inaccuracies, errors, and outright falsehoods. Judges across the nation have begun throwing out banks’ foreclosure lawsuits en masse. Last week, for example, a Florida judge dismissed 63 foreclosure lawsuits in a single day.
On top of that, another crisis for mortgage lenders and owners of mortgage-based securities is emerging: During the housing boom, the mortgage lending industry systematically failed to comply with state laws requiring physical transfer of legal documents during the closing process, which has the potential to make millions of mortgage loans legally unenforceable — and reduce the asset value of those loans to zero.
This could have cascading consequences for banks, holders and purchasers of mortgage-based securities and financial instruments, buyers and sellers, homeowners, and the U.S. economy as a whole. Here is what’s happening right now or could happen soon:
1. Title companies are refusing to insure properties that have been involved in foreclosure, which effectively makes these homes unsellable.
2. With a huge and growing backlog of unsold foreclosure properties overhanging the residential real estate market, housing is still many years away from recovery.
3. The gigantic glut of vacant and unsold homes across the nation could lead to a further fall in home prices generally, further reducing family net worths and making most families’ main asset — their home — even more illiquid than it already is.
4. As “underwater” borrowers — and lawyers assisting them — uncover legal flaws in the mortgage processing practices of the go-go years and devise effective legal stratagems to defend against foreclosure actions, it becomes harder and costlier for lenders to repossess properties … and the asset value of these properties on lenders’ books are plummeting.
5. This, in turn, is likely to lead to another round of bank and financial institution bankruptcies.
If courts decide to enforce the document transfer laws — and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t — hundreds of thousands of families now facing foreclosure may end up keeping possession of their homes without making payments … and there will be nothing lenders can do to recover their investments in those properties.
This looming new crisis for the financial industry is flying under most people’s radar, even though the MSM are reporting on it. It’s a big deal. While it represents a huge potential windfall for millions of borrowers who may, in effect, end up getting free homes at the expenses of careless lenders it also could freeze up the residential real estate market for years to come and knock the legs out from under economic recovery.
All of this is a consequence of the anti-government-regulation, laissez-faire, free-market economic philosophy of conservatives. Putting these people back in public offices would be a disaster for our country.
Let’s just hope and pray that enough voters realize this over the next few weeks, because if they don’t, your kids could be facing a homeless and jobless future.
Here’s a link in case you’re interested in reading more about it.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/st...../19673408/
Has a tea bagger every talked about the mortgage crisis?
If Republicans could win public office with Rasmussen results and ‘secret’ ballotting software, we truly would have one party rule.
Wonder what crooked BS they’re cooking up for 2012?
I don’t. Nothing personal poll takers but we don’t have time for you!
If you want information from me – show me the money!
McKenna jumping on this bandwagon, and in so doing hanging “Let’s-not-regulate-the-banks” Rossi out to flap in the breeze, smacks of self preservation. This whole thing is likely to generate such a horrendous stench that were he not to go along, I’d think he might risk being disbarred.
On another note regarding bank sleaze, a federal arbitrator last week awarded Larry Hagman and his wife a very substantial judgement against Shitty-er, Citigroup and Smith Barney, which they owned until recently. Seems the Hagmans put a substantional portion of their assets in the care of a Smith Barney broker, who against their wishes and after repeatedly lying to them quickly converted their portfolio from 25% stocks and the rest in guarenteed-income instruments, to the exact opposite–in 2007. In addition, she flimflammed them into taking out a life insurance policy against Larry which they didn’t need and for which the annual premiums were about 20% of said policy’s face value–which it wouldn’t have been worth anyway unless held it for about 30 years. (Mr. Hagman is 79 and his wife is even older.)
The award totalled about $1.1 million in personal damages, and $10 million in punitive damages, the latter being specified by the Hagmans as to be donated to charity.
But according the constititualists, the Hagman’s were just stupid and deserved to lose their money.
New SUSA:
Murray 50, Rossi 47
well, y’all just keep whistling past the graveyard
Dems are going down big time, and deserve to, given their complete cave in to the Republothugs
When people are given a choice between Republican-lite practices and the real thing, they usually go for the real thing
Keep those positive thoughts coming….
The Seattle Times tried to spin the new polls showing Murray having a significant lead as “confusing” and due to “discrepencies”, which they claim fly in the face of “pundits’ who “agree” that the race is “too close to call”.
Of course, the Times has a vested interest in making it appear that this is not just an election, but a “race” entering the final lap, with the two lead cars “neck and neck”. “Be sure to check back daily for updates on how close it is, readers, and renew your subscription to make sure you don’t miss anything”.
Hi Goldy.
I ignore blocked or numbers I don’t recognize. I definitely wouldn’t do an auto-poll.
Also, omitting cell phone numbers from polls is a factor.
RR @ 9
Excellent comment. Should be on the front page.
Oh. Now I get it. Bummer.
I had previously read that this foreclosure mess likely meant investors were going to sue banks into oblivion. Further, until this mess is sorted out, mortgage activity would all but cease, leading to a housing price freefall (aka liquidity crunch).
Knowing that bank’s mishandling of the physical paperwork zeros the value of the loans connects the dots. Thanks.
rhp
A friend told me about Seattle Times’ The Truth Needle. Kind of like a fact check on current campaigns. I spot checked a few of the issues and liked it:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/truthneedle/
I’m amused that Times’ reporting is reality-based whereas the editorials are pure fantasy.
I won’t buy or read The Times because of the editorials. Like I ever need to read another word from George Will, Friedman, Krauthammer, David Bobo Whatever His Name Is, Kristol, etc.
It’s really too bad. Our democracy desperately needs actual journalism. And the Blethens, by default or by design, are actively doing their part to snuff it out.
I doubt borrowers are going to end up with a house for free. The banks still have the mortgages/deeds of trust recorded, and the borrowers will never be able to sell the properties (or even refinance them) without someone at the banks signing off on a reconveyance. Bankers are notoriously unwilling to take personal responsibility for correcting a banking error, especially one of that magnitude, so a mutitude of requests would probably be ignored. The only way to get a reconveyance will be to pay the bank off in settlement (perhaps for a slightly reduced amount), or start a quiet-title action which would require up-front payment of significant attorney fees.
With the number of bank failures, mergers, and consolidations over the past two years, in addition to the frenzy of mortgage sales and re-sales in the two years immediatly preceeding the collapse, it might be that NOBODY knows who holds the original note, or where it could be located. They might be located in some unmarked documents box in deep storage somewhere in an FDIC warehouse (images of the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark come to mind).
Today’s new SUSA poll for King 5 is Rossi 50%, Murray 47%, not the other way around. On Sept. 22 SUSA had Murray ahead 50 to 48.
Yep, Obama is a terrible president.
It took him a year and a half to get out of Iraq, and there’s still a lot of U.S. forces there in advisory and security roles. He actually increased our involvement in Afganistan. The economy, although no longer spiralling downward, seems to be skipping along in a “jobless” recovery. He promised us health care reform, but we haven’t seen the benefits yet.
Yep, Obama is a terrible president. Until you look at the alternatives.
Or compare how much better off we are now, after being brought to the brink of destruction by the last Republican president.
Maybe that’s why the polls are trending back in favor of the Democrats. One look at a potential Congress led by the mad hatter Tea Party folks, and it scares the pants of the average voter.
Jason & Roger: My son was looking at buying a house earlier this year. But he decided to sit it out some more, so he could save up a larger down payment.
I was concerned that he was going to miss out when the prices started going up again, and of course he missed out on the $8,000 tax credit. But I’m thinking now he did the right thing.
As a young single man (only one income), the houses for which he could qualify were mostly foreclosures. They needed work done immediately, in some cases before the bank would approve the loan. If he had purchased ond of those houses and put in the amount of work and money required to make it livable, he might find that suddenly he no longer has a marketable title due to errors in the foreclosure process.
I guess homebuyers should read the title insurance policy very carefully before they close on a loan. The exceptions to coverage are very long anyway, and among them is anything which which doesn’t show up in the property records (a faulty foreclosure wouldn’t). Some title companies may add in a specific exclusion regarding foreclosures in the near future, just to make sure they are protected.
Cell phones vote too and there usually Blue
@25 Immediately make an eye appointment, then check again. It’s Murray 50. 4.1% error seems high though, I guess you could spin that around, if you lean that way.
Don, the SURVEY USA poll released today has Murray at 50 and Rossie at 47. Check it out on Real Clear Politics. They now list their pol of polls at Murrary 48.8, Rossi 45 and that still has them factoring in the Rossi Fabrizio poll of 9/26 and does not Murray internal poll of the same date.