The plan is working beautifully.
A new USAToday/Gallup poll appears to show that the tea bag protests are driving voters to be more hostile to reform rather than less. This seems to be particularly so among Independents.Game.
Gallup itself has up the internals of the poll. And the details paint a more mixed picture than the USAToday lede. That said, they do not seem to show any of the backlash against the craziness that many reformers are hoping for. And at a minimum they seem to be hardening opposition among Republicans and right-leaning independents.Set.
These results suggest that the backlash against the protestors among Americans is not so severe as to outweigh an increase in sympathy for the protestors' views. This appears to be driven mainly by the fact that Democrats don't report a lessening of sympathy for the protestors' views as much as Republicans report gaining sympathy -- coupled with the fact that more independents report gaining sympathy than losing it. Republicans split 51% more sympathetic to 8% less sympathetic, while Democrats are 17% more sympathetic to 39% less. Independents resemble the Republican pattern more than the Democratic one.Match. Obama and the Dems are losing the health care battle. Time's almost up.
Why are they losing? As usual, Obama and the Dems are playing chess. The other side has given up playing checkers and has gone straight to playing All-Out Global Thermonuclear War. They don't particularly care if the pieces get knocked off the board, dig?
Here endeth the lesson.
[UPDATE 10:01 PM] NMMNB's Steve M. has more.
The last two election cycles were fun, but for decades we were told that right-wingers and Republicans are "normal," even when they engage in racist attacks or blow up federal buildings, while liberals and Democrats are dirty hippies who don't go to church and eat arugula and use four-letter words in public. That ingrained notion doesn't go away overnight, or even in a few years. And the right-wing/corporate noise machine knows just how to tap into it.Democrats can never win. It's only a measure of how temporary the setback is for the Republicans.
And yet... new cycles turn over very quick. Obama is definitely not positioned well, but that won't matter if he is on top of the message during the last week of the recess. The majority of people aren't following this nearly enough to have made up their minds. If there is anything that those polls show it is that people have NOT made up their minds, are and skeptical of what is coming both because the Democrats haven't put down clear points and because the GOP just continues to spout out batshit crazy lies.
ReplyDeleteJust look at the abortion question a few weeks back: it was split down the middle on "pro-life" and "pro-choice" but something like 3 quarters of people supported abortion "under some conditions". The middle is mushy, and right now is most likely to just be waiting for a reason to sign on to HCR (questions like "do you approve of the job Obama is doing with health care" are more likely to reflect the intransigence of this issue rather than support for Obama). You're right that he is losing, I just don't know how important this dead period is vs the mood as Congress is back in session.
I hope you're right, Paul. I can't help feel like Obama's brought a knife to a gunfight.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean, but if there is anything I have learned from the 2008 election it was that the mood in the media is usually completely unrepresentative of reality. When the media was asking why he couldn't "close the deal" during the primaries I was shaking my head because there was no way to give a "knock out blow" to an opponent like Hillary. Then I outright laughed as the media made big waves about the bump from Palin and the RNC (which stomped on top of the DNC only a week before it), they were making mountains out of molehills when an abundance of past data shows what the VP nomination and conventions do it terms of polling bumps. Nate broke it down weeks ahead of time, but there was no way the media would miss out on an exciting new "dynamic" in the works even though before the Palin announcement the consensus was VP nominations didn't matter. True to form, barely 2 weeks later the bubble broke and Obama regained the same lead he had held steady since the two candidates became clear.
ReplyDeleteHeh, typing way too much to make a point but as bad as things "seem" it is also easy for politically attuned folk to feel that today's story is the most visible one when in reality the general public is focusing a whole different series of events (for instance, my own mother, an R from Texas, went with Obama after my pressure and the Collin Powell endorsement and saw very little else about the elections besides disliking Sara Palin and certainly didn't make up her mind because of the Lehman collapse despite everyone's saying that was the 'deal breaker' from McCain).
We'll see. I'm praying things calm down next week so we can get the country back on track at least debating health care, and not which side is going to blow first.
ReplyDelete"Democrats can never win."
ReplyDeleteI wish you were right about that.