Fifty-two percent of Americans say they would vote for someone other than Obama for president if given the choice. Only 34% think most members of Congress deserve to be reelected. Remember that 60% of those incumbents in both chambers are Democrats.
According to the survey, 51 percent feel their own member of Congress should be re-elected — also an all-time low in CNN polling — while 44 percent say their representative doesn’t deserve to be returned to office in November.
This is presumably more than just a reaction to tough economic times. It involves a semi-rational response to gridlock in Washington. But Steve Benen is right that the blame for that gridlock is not being aimed squarely and plainly at Republican obstruction. It’s not that the Democrats aren’t making that argument, it’s just that it is not being made effectively. That doesn’t mean that Atrios is wrong, but his point is not something the Democrats want to emphasize. In fact, his point has become a Republican talking point.
I think we need to start paying less attention to what’s on FOX and the rest of cable news and more attention to the damage the AP is doing by peddling right wing talking points to every local newspaper that subscribes to its newsfeed. Here in Chicago its a given that every local news show will be using right wing framing to report on every issue – even the so-called progressive stations do it because AP is still considered a trusted news source at the local level.
I don’t think I’d say the message isn’t getting through…
Plainly a message is getting through, and it is, in part, one used by both parties— “throw the bums out”
Unfortunately, it would seem that many of us (myself included, at times) aren’t always scrutinizing the message in its entirety, and so we as Media Consumers are susceptible to the Great Bamboozle.
one thing in the Obama-related polling Q that I wish would have been clarified some: how many people view him still as new to the Office of President, and how many now view him as ‘the Incumbent’? That distinction may be behind the numbers quoted regarding him…
If given a real choice I wouldn’t vote for Obama either but the GOP will not be providing a real choice as all their presidential contenders are insane.
for better or worse, the present stable of candidates appear to reflect the Party’s values and platform pretty closely.
that said, it’s not the candidates that are insane, but the Party itself.
the general question may end up boiling down to: will you support a Party that doesn’t care about you and in some cases will work to your detriment if it helps their corporate Masters, or will you support the party that wants to do the right thing, but is too frightened of their shadows (maybe call it Barney Fife syndrome?) to actually accomplish something? Personally, for their failings, I find myself still behind the Dems, as the Republicans thus far have shown themselves to be repugnant Corporate lackeys or Authoritarian figures I’d be more inclined to pimp-slap than follow…
When you put it that way, third parties look worthwhile.
My actual point is I’d take Howard Dean over 100,000 Obamas in a heartbeat.
given that choice, I’d be with you…
The point is not that the ‘message isn’t getting through.’
The point is that the media continues to be dominated by centrist and right-wing OWNERS. It doesn’t matter who the talking heads are. In the end, if the network’s owner doesn’t want that point made, it won’t be, period.
That’s why the left is where it is. We’ve never invested in media ownership the way the right has. And until we do, we’ll never have the megaphone we do.
AND, until we do, our country will continue to suffer. We can’t cure what ails us when we continually misdiagnose the disease.
… we’ll never have the megaphone THEY do ….
Here’s the contradiction in media ownership. Either the lefty owner doesn’t act enough like an owner to make money or the owner acts so much like an owner that the media ceases to be lefty.
What has happened is when the message bypasses the national media and is aired by more local media. But for this to happen, local media have to be locally controlled.
And the message is not as difficult to sell as you might think. Why else does the right need wall-to-wall 24-7-365 broadcasting of their carefully crafted talking points by talkers who get folks worked up? Maybe it’s because they are going up against most people’s common sense.
There are things that can be done as evidenced in the following links. The first is basically a summation of a problem with the AP.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/ap%E2%80%99s-ron-fournier-racial-arsonist-and-unethical-jo
urnalist
An informational article re: AP & NSA
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/jeremy-bigwood/2006/02/the-nsas-relationship-with-reuters-
and-ap
The Plan:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/fournier-conflict-interest-campaign-investigating-our-apme
-target-audience
Action:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/remove-fournier-draft-letter-apme-member-0
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A690-2000Oct24
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/fournier-watch-your-letters-apme-members-are-working
You have probably noticed that Fournier was removed as AP Washington head and appeared on news shows and roundtables a LOT less frequently after The Field’s efforts.
Example of prior results of authentic journalism:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A690-2000Oct24
However, I think that the Dems need to take some responsibility and put the Republicans in their place. Why are they so bad at messaging?
This was intended as a response to eclecticbrotha above.
I’d say they’re bad at it because they had no Howard Dean. The entire experience of most of those legislators is that is that DC is a Republican town and they don’t really know different. They’ve got few people to show them how a proud Democratic Legislator acts. Obama certainly didn’t, and Grayson is a non-entity because he’s just a random house member.
Interesting. Here’s some more.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200807220006
I sense a bigger issue here.
I remember that! Thanks for the reminder.
I contend that if we worked at it we could make a dent. Maybe by taking MM’s articles, and those of independent journalists, and expanding on them. MM gets written off by the MSM & the right but we could pick and choose where we wanted to put pressure and then pressure until we won. There are a lot of people who have consciences, somewhere in there, we just have to bug them until they find their conscience themselves!
I’m guilty of resting after years of activism. It was easier to become motivated during the Bush regime, and the tendency is to let up now. We also need to re-think our role since many of us became accustomed to being in the opposition. This habitual opposition explains some the criticism of Obama coming from the left. I’d compare it to Nader’s stance on many issues — a fashionable anti-establishment cynicism.
One area that the MSM needs to be taken to task on is the meltdown. We avoided a depression but administration critics have ignored that and framed the situation as if the stimulus was planned all along. It’s as sensible as following in the path of Hoover. Timing (as in too short a downturn) and the jobless recovery had something to do with it, but it’s still an issue of presenting the information to the public in a way that they can understand it. Also, the issue of obstructionism (now being addressed on Maddow) needs to be addressed.
“We also need to re-think our role since many of us became accustomed to being in the opposition. This habitual opposition explains some the criticism of Obama coming from the left.”
I came to that conclusion months ago. I have to turn off my local progressive radio station on a regular basis. The screeching and whining is just too much and it gets really depressing.
Any suggestions on how to get them to break their habitual opposition? I get the impression that it wouldn’t matter if the President accomplished everything that they say they want, in just the way that they say that they want, and they still wouldn’t be happy!
Pretty much the same applies to the Senate and the complainers in the House. I think that the President is trying to get them to grow up and earn their keep. For them to just keep saying ‘we don’t know what he wants’ is just trying to put the blame on the President for any failure instead of their taking responsibility for their actions. Silly and immature.
It’s a problem I need to think about but here’s some ideas.
I think we need to hammer issues such as the control that special interests exert on government through Republican party, and highlighting the recent SCOTUS decision should a major part of that effort. The gradual entrenchment of interests such as the FIRE sector and big pharma have captured government. The great risk shift and great wealth transfer should be our targets.
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/254.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15923.htm
I think we need to run against the system just as so many others have.
What message? That the Democrats had 60 Senators and the Republicans had 40, but it’s all the Republicans’ fault?
It won’t fly. Lieberman, Batj, Lincoln, Landreiu, et cetera, ad nauseum betrayed their Party and Obama/Reid/Durbin couldn’t or wouldn’t pull them in line to at least vote for cloture.
Obama promised Change and didn’t deliver. That’s what the man in the street sees and he isn’t looking for excuses, he’s looking for action. The Tea Party vents all his concerns, even though WE know that it’s just a Republican tool.
Bayh, not Batj. A slip of the mouse and it posted before I could edit.
Aside from the biased media, current incumbents are faced with a situation impossible to remedy quickly. Obama and the large Dem majority came in, with huge publicity and expectation, just as the economy crashed due to the criminality and incompetence of the previous regime. In a society where paying attention and using reason matters, it should be easy to point out that nobody — no country, no politician, no party — can deliver a pain-free, timely deliverance from deep disaster.
We do not live in such a society. Our first reaction to any national annoyance is “Throw the bums out” with little or no attempt to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. The root assumption is the “they” are all traitors, grifters, whores, distinguished only by the facility of their lies.This gets expressed now by figures ranging from Naderites to Teabaggers, but goes back to the very beginnings of our history. You’ll find it among the first generation of politicians, in the works of critics like Mark Twain and scores of other commenters.
It is attractive and childish at the same time. This “shoot ’em down now and sort ’em out later” reaction ends up being deeply conservative. We can afford the bluster, the minor tinkering inflated to look like rebellion because our royalist system assures that radical change will not happen short of revolution. We can whine and threaten because we know nothing profound will happen that we have to take responsibility for. Our culture and our political system conspire to keep us in a perpetual state of childhood, assured by that same Constitution that we have an inherent right to throw as many impotent tantrums as it takes to feel better.
“Fifty-two percent of Americans say they would vote for someone other than Obama for president if given the choice.” Can you provide a direct link to the question “would you vote for President Obama or someone other than President Obama if given the choice?” I can’t find it. The question I see is “do you think President Obama deserves to be elected?” Two very different questions. Voters commonly say an incumbent should not be re-elected because of party identification and rejection of the alternative. It’s not the same.
There are links in the opening post. The question they asked was “deserved to be reelected,” which is not actually saying they would vote for someone else — oddly.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/16/rel4a.pdf
I’ve spent too much time conducting polls not to realize that questions posed in the nebulous figurative form are responded to differently than concrete questions. Voters often distribute the scorn equally and deem neither candidate worthy of election.
In my “past life” I was involved in designing and implementing surveys.
I’ve become a real critic of how questions were asked, and how the results were spinned.
I recently got lucky and got to be a Gallup survey subject. The survey was extremely long. I knew what was going on–and that the survey was skewed to senior citizens who had the time to sit and answer idiot questions for half an hour.
I have never seen such a survey broken down between the folks who want Obama to be more progressive and those who want a conservative at any costs.
Until the press are intelligently curious about the
disaggregation of data–who answers what and why–it’s not real.
Let’s start with Obama. On a clip on Countdown last night, Obama blamed the “folks across the aisle” for obstructionism – he couldn’t bring himself to use the word “Republicans”. Reminds me of the 2008 Democratic primary debates I saw where all of the candidates were afraid to use the words “Bush” or “Cheney”; it was always “the administration”. What were/are they afraid of?
In that case, it’s probably because “Republicans” describes a significant portion of his listeners (and the electorate), while the “folks across the aisle” are specifically obstructionist Senators.
In the same vein, someone critical of the Congressional Black Caucus wouldn’t criticize “blacks”. I suspect they would use a similarly euphemistic term.
That being said, precise language does not good politics make. I agree he should find a punchier way to say it.