The Miami Herald reports that “Katherine Archuleta, the political director for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, is coming to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa from Friday to Sunday. She’ll meet with Democratic elected officials and the grassroots Obama leaders known as the Fall Fellows, who help recruit volunteers and man phone banks. At the same time, Vice President Joe Biden travels to Miami Beach to raise campaign cash.”

According to the Herald, the Obama reelection campaign is focusing on Hispanics. The Pew Research Center data shows that Hispanic voters supported Obama over GOP presidential candidate John McCain “by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election.”

A Gallup poll issued early this month indicates that Obama “earned the lowest monthly job approval rating of his presidency to date in August, with 41% of U.S. adults approving of his overall job performance, down from 44% in July. He also received term-low monthly job approval ratings from both Hispanics (48%) and whites (33%) and tied his lowest rating from blacks (84%).”

Gallup adds that “although Hispanics’ monthly approval of Obama dipped below 50% for the first time in August, more still approve than disapprove (48% vs. 37%) of his job performance.”

Massachusetts topped the list of states with the lowest number of uninsured at 5.3 percent. In 2006, the state instituted a mandate requiring residents to carry health insurance. Vermont has the second lowest uninsured rate at 9.2 percent. Vermont recently enacted the nation’s first single-payer health care system.

Rounding out the top 10 were Connecticut, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware.

Despite the strong showing in the state-based rankings, Minnesota’s rate of uninsured has climbed over the last few years from 8.7 percent in 2009.

Minnesota also placed third in 2010 and 2009, according to Gallup. The Midwest and Northeast have historically had low uninsured rates.

The bottom ten were all southern states, except for California and Alaska. Texas had the highest percent of uninsured with 27.4 percent followed by Mississippi, Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, California, Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia. Texas has consistently led the nation in having the highest percentage of its population without health insurance in the Gallup survey.

Obama’s approval rating, which Gallup estimates at 40 percent, is surpassed by the percentage of registered voters who say they would vote for him over one of the four leading GOP candidates. Obama does best against Bachmann and worst against Romney, although again the advantage is not statistically significant.

The poll also suggests a small but significant group of Republicans who are displeased with the Ames Straw Poll winners and would vote for Obama over Paul or Bachmann. While Perry and Romney received 92 and 91 percent support among Republicans in a matchup against Obama, Bachmann and Paul received 86 and 82 percent, respectively. Eleven percent of Republicans would rather vote for Obama than Ron Paul, compared to 6 percent for Obama versus Perry or Romney.

Among independent and Democratic voters, the GOP candidates all receive about the same level of support relative to Obama, except for Bachmann, who does slightly worse among independent voters.

Here are the poll results:

According to Gallup, Minnesota currently has a 9-point Democratic advantage. Forty-seven percent of Minnesota respondents identified as Democrats or leaning towards the Democratic Party while 38 percent are Republicans or lean Republican. That’s down from a high of 15 advantage points in 2008 for Democrats and 12 points in 2009, but an improvement from a low of four points in 2010.

That gap in 2010 was similar for many states, but Minnesota appears to have rebounded more quickly than others.

Minnesota is the only Midwestern state in the top 15 outside of reliably Democratic Illinois.

Gallup’s poll only shows a snapshot of where adults surveyed in the state stand during the poll’s timeframe, January through June 2011, and says other factors may influence voters.

“The party affiliation estimates are based on the entire state adult population, and do not necessarily reflect each party’s electoral strength within a state,” the pollster said. “A state’s voting electorate may be tilted slightly more to one party than the basic affiliation figures due to differences in turnout between Republicans and Democrats in the state and perhaps the strength of the respective party organizations in the state.”

Listed as most strongly Democratic: the District of Columbia (with 78 percent of respondents identifying as Dems compared to 10 percent who consider themselves GOPers), Hawaii (52 to 28) and Maryland (54 to 33). The top state for Republicans is Utah, where 58 percent identified as Republicans and 27 percent identified as Democrats.

What’s most frightening is just how much lower-income Americans have pulled back: Your average earner is now spending less than half per day what he spent in May 2008, and 20 percent less than he spent a year ago. Those are really massive cuts.

Given that consumer spending makes up about 60 percent of the U.S. economy, that does not attest just to how hard the middle class has taken the recession, but to how hard it will be for the recovery to take hold. Until consumers spend more, employers won’t hire. But if employers won’t hire, consumers can’t start spending more. That is the horrible pretzel logic of the current economic situation.

Compounding the bad news for Democrats is a new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, which shows that the slow but steady gains in popularity made by the health care reform bill since passage have been wiped out:

The August Health Tracking Poll finds that support for health reform fell over the course of August, dipping from a 50 percent favorability rating in July to 43 percent, while 45 percent of the public reported unfavorable views. The dip in favorability returned public opinion on the new law to the even split last seen in May before a modest uptick in support in June and July.

The drop in support for the health care reform bill is no doubt due in part to a barrage of negative advertising that residents around the country, but especially in swing districts in states like Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, have been exposed to. The backlash is bad enough, it seems, that even progressive groups like Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which fought hard to pass health care reform, are attempting to take the issue off the table when they work to reelect lawmakers who voted for the bill:

Now, HCAN’s field crews are finding that the best way to support reform-friendly lawmakers is to talk about something else: jobs, the economy or other issues likely to resonate more with voters.

“We want to be flexible in talking about what is most relevant to constituents, whatever issues are most motivational,” said HCAN’s national field director, Margarida Jorge, who organizes a daily call with their partner organizations. “We can have a high level of focus on health care but also understand at times the focus is going to shift.” [...]

But what HCAN describes as a tactical shift, reform opponents see as proof that the law is unpopular, a loser for Democrats in a tough election cycle. “Voters don’t like health reform and they know that,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director who now works with the American Action Forum on their Operation Healthcare Choice project. “Independents are key to control; health reform is unpopular but jobs and economy could move votes. When it comes to substance, on health reform, they’re in bad shape.”

HCAN’s move seems like the wrong tactic. By side-stepping the debate, the group only further cedes the field for groups like the American Action Forum, along with its network of loosely affiliated conservative nonprofits that includes American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, to define the issue through a rash of advertising this election cycle. But in a tough electoral season, the group would rather seek ways to keep legislators who voted for the bill in office than pick fights with detractors about the bill itself.

That said, it’s worth looking at the historical trends for this survey, to see if this is really as unusual as it seems. Here are more data from Gallup:

Forty-two percent is the highest percentage in a long time, but it’s not much higher than last year — when 40 percent of Americans self-identified as conservative — and only somewhat higher than 2006 and 2008, when 37 percent of Americans self-identified as conservative. And if you take this in addition to the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey on ideology — where 38 percent of Americans self-identified as conservative — it’s not clear that there’s actually anything different about Gallup’s results. Americans always prefer to describe themselves as moderate or conservative, even when (as was the case in 1992 and 2008) they deliver the majority of their votes to liberal congressional majorities and presidential candidates.

Gallup surmises, sensibly, that upper-income Americans are spooked by the continued economic bad times and the crisis in Europe :

With middle- and lower-income consumer spending remaining flat as underemployment remains high, it seems that a recovery in overall consumer spending will depend to a large extent on upper-income consumers. It may be that these consumers, despite having a desire to return to spending, have been spooked by recent signs of a weakening U.S. economy, combined with the oil spill in the Gulf, global financial difficulties, and possibly future tax uncertainties. As a result, upper-income Americans, like other consumers, may be returning to the new normal spending levels of 2009. If this turns out to be the case, it could easily mean a slower economy than many had hoped for as the remainder of the year unfolds.

The Gallup poll got a lot of play in the blogosphere, as one could argue it showed that deficit hawks — Blue Dog Democrats and fiscal conservatives, mostly — had succeeded in scaring the bejesus out of Americans and convincing them of the immediate need to start slashing the federal budget. When adding up “extremely serious” and “very serious,” 79 percent of Americans are worried about terrorism and debt, but unemployment still takes the cake, concerning 83 percent. And cooler academic minds argued that one poll does not not indicate a new political reality. Monkey Cage blogger and political scientist Andrew Gelman, for instance, pointed to a good blog post from Ben Somberg on the issue. Somberg argues that this is only one survey — and in many others, Americans report being far more concerned with the immediate issue of crisis levels of unemployment than with the long-term issue of the United States’ unsustainable debt.

A Pew Research/National Journal poll from early June asked, “Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?” Number one was “job situation” with 41 percent. “Federal budget deficit” got 23 percent.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked, “Please tell me which one of these items you think should be the top priority for the federal government.” Sure enough, “job creation and economic growth” won with 35 percent. “The deficit and government spending” got 20 percent.

A Fox News poll also in early May got even more dramatic results. “Economy and jobs” topped the priority list with 47 percent, while “deficit, spending” garnered only 15 percent.

A CBS/NYT poll in early April found 27 percent prioritizing “jobs,” 27 percent the “economy” and 5 percent prioritizing “budget deficit/national debt.”

The only recent poll that gives the slightest hint of support…is the USA Today/Gallup poll from late May (not even their newest). Participants were asked, “How serious a threat to the future well-being of the United States do you consider each of the following?” For “federal government debt,” 40 percent said extremely serious, 39 percent very serious, and 15 percent somewhat serious. For “unemployment,” 33 percent said extremely serious, 50 percent said very serious and 15 percent said somewhat serious. If you use only the “extremely serious” numbers, you get 7 percent more for the debt. …

And in fact a newer Gallup poll, from a week ago, asking, “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?,” finds the economy and jobs on top. “Economy in general” gets 28 percent, “unemployment/jobs” gets 21 percent and “federal budget deficit” gets 7 percent.

I think that the academics are right here. Poll after poll and survey after survey show that Americans want Congress to help stave off job losses and get people back to work, and would not mind a bit more deficit spending now, particularly if Congress commits to serious debt reduction once the recovery has taken a better hold. But in the screwy logic of Washington, one poll can be stronger than a dozen. Politicians have started trotting out that Gallup survey showing that Americans fear debt and terrorism above all. In a letter to The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein,* Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) used the Gallup poll as justification for holding up the much-whittled-down and much-needed jobs bill currently floundering in the Senate. And Nelson’s intransigence and concern about the deficit are enough to effectively kill that bill — no matter how many other senators and how many millions of Americans support it.

*Full disclosure: In the romantic phrasing of the census, Ezra is my “unmarried domestic partner.”

As political gambles go, it’s a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party‘s outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.

The standard rule of midterm elections is that only the most reliable voters show up at the polls, so both parties have traditionally focused on the unglamorous and conventional work that turns out their bases. But this year, the Democrats are doubling down on registering and motivating newer voters — especially the 15 million heavily minority and young, who made it to the polls for the first time in the last presidential election.

That said, not all Democrats are on board with the idea:

Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50 million investment will pay off — except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama’s reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president’s team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party’s immediate struggle for survival.

“I have zero confidence that they’re heading in the right direction here,” says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn’t want to be quoted by name criticizing his party’s major midterm election initiative. Added another: “I think they’re going to come in for a very rude awakening. It’s going to be brutal.”

You can count me among the skeptics; I’m just not sure how much the party and OFA can do to mobilize enough young voters and minorities to reduce the enthusiasm gap with Republicans. I’m not convinced that this is a self-interested move to keep the 2008 grassroots operation alive for Obama’s re-election, but even if it were, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, even if Democrats survive November with their majorities intact, they can all but kiss governing goodbye. Not only will Democrats possess smaller majorities (possibly razor-thin), but they’ll be faced with a GOP that is confident, reinvigorated and more than prepared to turn the outrage and obstructionism up to 11. If the goal for Democrats this year is to walk away from the midterms with something, then a grassroots primed to re-elect Obama in 2012 isn’t something to dismiss.