John wrote earlier about the fact that a Gallup poll shows the public overwhelmingly siding with Democrats over the stimulus bill. Democracy Corps (an important Democratic polling firm) has a poll on the possible effect of the stimulus debate in contested House races:
Voters in the 40 of the most competitive Democratic-held congressional districts favor the economic stimulus legislation passed by the House this week, according to a new Democratic poll.
Democracy Corps sampled 1,200 people combined in those districts, dividing them into two groups: the 20 most competitive districts in the first tier and the next 20 in a second tier.
Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who conducted the poll, reported that 62 percent of voters in the 20 most competitive districts favor the $819 billion stimulus plan, while 66 percent in the next tier favored the legislation.
“I think that this bill and its conference … will be the defining vote of this Congress,” Greenberg said Friday morning at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. Greenberg said lawmakers’ votes for the stimulus package were akin in importance to members’ votes for the economic package proposed by President Clinton early in his administration, in terms of their impact on congressional midterm elections.
The idea that opposition to the stimulus bill seems to exist primarily among cable news pundits is catching on. Here’s Josh Marshall:
What’s most striking about these numbers is the continuing disconnect between the mood of the capital and that of the country. For me, a lot of that is a product of how Washington continues to be wired for Republican control. A president, and particularly one like Obama, is the one person who is in a position to cut through that.
And here’s some comments from the Obama team:
Gibbs: I think it’s illuminating because it may not necessarily be where cable television is on all of this. But, you know, we’re sort of used to that. We lost on cable television virtually every day last year. So, you know, there’s a conventional wisdom to what’s going on in America via Washington, and there’s the reality of what’s happening in America.
Axelrod: If I had listened to the conversation in Washington during the campaign for president, I would have jumped off a building about a year and a half ago.
This hearkens back to my favorite political quote of the last campaign:
If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters.
I *still* don’t really understand the Villager love for stupid Republican talking points or Villagers’ failure to come to grips with the fact the Republican party is now a regional party. It infects new members of the Village almost immediately — see Scherer, Michael and Ambinder, Marc. It goes much deeper than Cokie and Broder. And I really don’t know why.
jcricket
I don’t know how Republicans can stand to be so aggressively wrong on everything. Wrong on global warming. Wrong on macro economic policy. Wrong on tax cuts. Wrong about global warming. Wrong about stem cells. Wrong about foreign policy.
They’re rapidly approaching the tipping point (as you point out). Regional party is a stepping stone into obsolescence. Look at Georgia for an example – as any state with half a brain attracts forward-looking people, and their overall "minority" population increases, that state becomes increasingly Democratic.
Republicans have this coming election to reverse the tide, or potentially find themselves in the same downward spiral the economy’s now in. Only there’s no bailout coming.
Perhaps its karma.
Perry Como
Here’s a chart to show your favorite wingnut the next time he says x isn’t stimulus.
Eric U.
my daughter has taken up watching cspan every waking hour outside of school. I just watched McConnel talk, and if I didn’t know he was fucking evil, he wasn’t all that bad. The press can ignore things like when he said "we’re pretty comfortable about where we are on this" because the ugly truth of the comment is not that evident. It’s not like in the old days when Dole or Gingrich were throwing bombs and screaming about the Democrats committing treason from the leadership positions. The villagers don’t want to talk about substance and policies, that is boring.
Church Lady
The polling was done in districts already held by Democrats, so the results aren’t really surprising. Right now, a lot of people are scared and have reached the point of "do something, do anything, just make it better now, and I’ll worry about tomorrow later."
I saw a Bloomberg report today that was scary as hell. If you take all the actions taken by the Treasury and the Fed in the last year (TARP, loans and guarantees) trying to shore up the financial system, and then add in the stimulus from last year and the new one, we’re on the hook for something like 9 trillion dollars. That’s an awful big hole to try and dig out of. I think we’re totally screwed.
Scott
It infects new members of the Village almost immediately—see Scherer, Michael and Ambinder, Marc. It goes much deeper than Cokie and Broder. And I really don’t know why.
You don’t get to be a member of the country club unless you believe what all the members believe. If you want to schmooze with the bigwigs, you’d better be able to abandon what you used to believe and parrot what the bigwigs are saying.
Ambitious pundits keep track of what the hivemind believes, while newbies are exposed only to the hivemind’s culture, so they get assimilated, too.
TheHatOnMyCat
Well, duh. We’ve been saying this for a year. Cable tv, and pundits, are just noise at this point. The public has learned how to figure things out despite, not because of, the whores in the media.
Outside of the blogs and the political junkies, nobody pays close attention to the complete nonsense on cable. Even if you wanted to do so, you couldn’t unless you just shrug off the cognitive dissonances and the complete idiocy.
Doing what blogs do, which is to turn on the noise machines and then get all excited over the noise every day, is the equivalent of going into a McDonalds every day and deciding that America must eat nothing but cheap hamburgers.
pattonbt
@jcricket:
Not hard to see why, actually. Imagine youve held your seat comfortably for a long time. Youve never had to buck the conventional wisdom of yours parties platform. The inside beltway press wont call you on your BS when its plain as the midday sun. And you keep winning. You do this for the greater part of your adult life. You memorize the game, the platitudes, the way to not answer a question, the way to avoid facts and taking a stance all without ever having to pay a price.
You start to live in a fantasy world of your own making where you firmly believe you must be right because otherwise you wouldnt win. The game becomes what important not the substance.
If the sunshine ever gets through to these guys and their views for what they have wrought (and this applies to all on every side of the isle inside legislative branch) and it is questioned vigorusly, they are toast.
I am still skeptical the press will ever really call BS on the Republicans though. Basically admitting one way is right and the other is catastrophe ends the game and if the game ends, the press ends. So good for Republicans (for now), sad for us.
Tax Analyst
You see, Doug, if it’s not all TAX CUTS!! TAX CUTS!! all the time, down the line, well, the Republicans just can’t support it, because its not, you know, "Fiscally Responsible".
For an example of how "Fiscally Responsible" works in GOP-eeze, see "Deficit, 2001-2008".
Honestly, to try and figure out WTF is wrong with the Republican Party you need a whole lot of time and several reams of paper. But I guess #1 on my list is that they just don’t seem to give a fat fuck if the country goes down the toilet, as long as they can posture and obstruct.
It’s truly weird, because its hard to tell just who they are posturing for anymore. Maybe they want to convince the 28% out there that they’ll continue to be loyal to them and espouse dumb-ass wingnut positions, even when it’s not an election year.
TheHatOnMyCat
You might want to check my post at 352 in the previous thread here @TheHatOnMyCat:
Brick Oven Bill
Your numbers are suspect DougJ. Rasmussen seems to be neutral to me. His polling data shows 43-37 against the package, a recent flip. Tonight did not help.
Enlightened Layperson
I still don’t really understand the Villager love for stupid Republican talking points or Villagers’ failure to come to grips with the fact the Republican party is now a regional party.
It’s simple enough. The squeaky hinge gets the oil. Republicans know how to seize the initiative, talk first, and talk most, so they get to set the agenda. If Democrats knew how to seize the initiative and talk most, the beltway press would quote them just as mindlessly.
Church Lady
@TheHatOnMyCat:
Gee, thanks for pointing me to that one. Now, instead of just dealing with an impending sense of doom, I’m now also having heart palpitations.
Church Man jokes that we may need to hole up on the farm in Arkansas, armed to the teeth. That scenario is starting to seem like less and less of a joke. Oh well, if Nostradamus is correct, we don’t have much time left anyway. :)
TheHatOnMyCat
I know, I had the same reaction.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
Comedy Gold, B.O.B. I’ll bet you think Fox is too liberal.
.
Tax Analyst
That was some pretty ominous shit. Now the only question is, were Paulson & Company just filling the Hill-billies full of scary shitola? It seems that perhaps Paulsen’s one-page proposal was really a ransom note, "Give me all the money or my friends will blow this place up", or something along those lines. So it could have been some extremely ham-fisted, but effective con-artistry…
…but what if it WASN’T bullshit?
I guess it’s a good thing I’m completely and totally exhausted. Otherwise I might have trouble sleeping tonight.
Well, I’m done. Later.
JR
It isn’t that the village likes GOP talking points but a tacit acknowledgement that it’s the republicans who run congress. The village knows all it would take is one hissyfit and the Democrats will fold as usual. That’s why they defer to republicans, though it doesn’t excuse their shoddy reporting on the stimulus.
Francis
And I really don’t know why.
because it’s EASY. and kinda fun, in a high school way. and the philosophy of lower taxes is good for you. (when "you" is one of the 500 or so members of the elite punditry.)
there are no nuances in R-World (get it? Our World? my god, i’m so funny i could replace dennis miller.)
You’re with us or against us. We don’t want the warning cloud to be a mushroom cloud. Tax cuts solve everything. Global warming is a lie.
or, more simply,
We can be fat, dumb and happy. F*CK the rest of the planet.
Democrats, by contrast, insist on nuance. And nuance, like math, is hard. (cue barbie whining.)
bago
Re: Scary Shit.
I’m finishing this bottle of wine tonight.
evie
One of my fave’s from the campaign was Halperin stating with great ernestness and conviction that the "McCain can’t remember how many houses he owns" story was the beginning of the end for Obama. Must have been a day Plouffe saw as a winner.
Even today I nearly spit out my coffee when I heard A. Mitchell today say after Obama hit it out of the park in Indiana that the townhall format "was always one of Obama’s strongest during the campaign — as it was for McCain." First, that was not the CW on teevee during the campaign. It was always that Obama barely got through townhalls. (A pre-spin point the O team used to their advantage before the second debate). Second, I found it hysterical that even as McCain struggles for relevancy, the media feels compelled to stroke his ego on a point and a day that had nothing to do with him.
A just imagine: these poll numbers all came before Obama decided to get into the game of selling the recovery package in a real way.
NonWonderDog
The newest wingnut talking point… You know, there are some things I just don’t expect from the wingnuts. This new one is just too far beyond what I ever expected, and I just can’t believe that anyone would be stupid enough to take it seriously, or stupid enough to repeat it on television. To wit:
No cite right now, but I’ve heard it at least twice today. It’s probably something Rushbo said, and if the pattern holds you’ll hear it ten or twenty times tomorrow. To his credit, Bill0 actually cut off Dick Morris when he started repeating it. I guess it’s even too stupid for O’Reilly, which is an accomplishment.
I was actually naïve enough to think they were objecting to earmarks because they thought the bureaucrats were better at distributing funds. And I thought that was stupid and petty.
AC Delaware County
The Villagers can’t tell that the Republicans are a regional Southern party because Washington is squarely in the cultural South. They would have to get most of the way to Baltimore before they realized the pitchforks-and-torches criticality of their situation (by crossing into the Northeast), which is something that they would of course never deign to do.
bago
Or perhaps get their asses out to the west coast. You know, that place where we’re making the internets and iphones and whatnot.
Xenos
Baltimore is not still considered part of the south? Anywhere the waitresses call you "hon" when you go out for breakfast has got to be the South, right?
Anyway, I remember the salutary effect of reading mediawhoresonline.com back in the day. After Bush v. Gore I determined either I was going mad, or the news media as a whole had gone mad. Maybe it is time for the venerable old media horse to come galloping to the rescue.
Balconespolitics
There are some big corporate types … you know – the guys who sit on the Boards of Directors of all those companies that run their ads during the Sunday Morning Shows for things the normal consumer will never buy …. who must absolutely fear the lack of leverage they’ll have when the Republican Party really goes belly-up. The villagers know who signs their paychecks.
JL
The repubs have been doing journalists’ homework for a long time now. Research and actual reporting takes times.
sgwhiteinfla
DougJ I imagine you are being facetious here but for anyone else the answer should be obvious. The Village bows to Republican will because if they don’t they pay a price. The truth is Democrats, myself included, do a shitty job of organized outrage. Calling in to Tee Vee stations when they treat Democrats wrong or even just are percieved to have treated Democrats wrong. But conservatives/Republicans light up the switchboards, send emails and will picket outside of studios if they even sniff some"lefty librul bias".
The truth is the fact that Republicans don’t deal in good faith helps them in that exercise because it gives them the excuse to get outraged over the dumbest shit ever and pull it off almost convincingly. But for the most part Democrats don’t just complain for the sake of complaining so we never make the Tee Vee stations feel the pain. Therefore your Cokie Roberts and your Broders and your Tweetys and your Halperin all fear pissing off Republicans a helluva lot more than pissing off Democrats.
As for Scherer, Ambinder and I will add Tapper,and Jon Martin of Politico, literally Drudge rules their world. But we kick Scherer in the teeth a lot at Swampland (the time he was named Wanker of the Day by Atrios and then got eaten alive by the commenters when he responded is still one of the classic moments of the campaign) so he is starting to put out a little better product. Tapper is a lost cause. Ambinder for those who haven’t noticed now has opened comments on his revamped page so if you want to snap him into reality I suggest signing up today. They have already started raking him over the coals. These people only respond to one thing and hint hint, it ain’t the carrot.
cleek
the DC press knows it can pick on Dems and not be accused of treason in return.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fixed.
Napoleon
I actually heard Adam Putnam (aka "that Howdy Doody looking guy") call the Republican’s a regional party on NPR this morning.
@sgwhiteinfla:
That is absolutely correct.
TR
Not only that, but contrast their inability to recognize that fact, and the constant harping about how the Democrats were the ones who were becoming less than a national party because they having trouble in the South, or Appalachia, or whatever.
Even in their worst years in the South, the Democrats were never completely shut out of the region the way the Republicans have been in the Northeast lately. That region has about the same number of EVs and states as the South, and that region was the Republicans’ traditional power base (just as the South was for Democrats), and yet we heard not even one percent of the hand-wringing over the Republican collapse in the Northeast as we did about the less spectacular Democratic collapse in the South.
The media may actually be more of a believer in the Republican mythos than Republicans themselves.
ksmiami
Because the Republicans have more cocktail shrimp at their parties, that’s why.
SATSQ
Mike in NC
Media whores: still on the McCain tire swing, still trying to dig the Bullshit Express out of the ditch it ran into back in October. Makes one wonder how many reporters are camped out in front of the Palin residence at any given time.
Redshift
Um, no. Northern Virginia isn’t remotely in the cultural South, and hasn’t been for a couple of decades at least, and DC and suburban Maryland are even less so. You have to get as far south as Frederickburg, at least, before you find significant numbers of people who are Robert E. Lee worshipping gun owners, and trust me, the Villagers would never go near there.
Don’t blame us; they ignore the views of the area they live in just as firmly as those of the rest of the country.
I think it’s more likely that since the Villagers are firmly a part of the wealthy class who own the GOP, and they haven’t figured out that while their kind still provide the money, they barely exist among the elected officials and GOP voters, and the crazies have taken over.
jcricket
I’d say the northeast is permanently dead to Republicans – not only are they out of office now, they have no bench, and all the young people are going to grow up to be Democrats (or at least not run for office as Republicans).
The next thing to watch is the west and mountain states (not counting the mormon belt). WA, CA and OR are getting closer and closer to full (all statewide offices, 2/3rds majorities in legislative houses, etc) Democratic control. Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota – all trending blue (most are at least 1/2 way there already). And with the exception of the old people, the young people are voting Democrat 2/3 or 3/4 of the time.
Frankly, this is as much of as result of Republicans repulsing people with their current brand and politics as it is Democrats ability to recruit through "tent expansion". As odious as the "Blue Dogs" and people like Mary Landreiu are, the Democrats do a better job of recruiting "locally appropriate" candidates rather than forcing fealty to a single, regional, view of the "Democratic Party" brand.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Occam’s Razor.
Corporate owned media conglomerates in bed with the Republicans who de-regulated their environment so as to create those giant conglomerates.
OF COURSE they’re going to fellate Republicans– what orifice do you think their money comes from?
RL Clark
Aren’t the cable companies all owned by conservative Republicans?
Josh B.
Really? Because I do…the Villagers understand their audience. "Welcome to America…where if it takes more than 15 seconds to understand it, we don’t wanna hear about it!!"
DougJ
I don’t think it’s all corporate media ownership. Many business lobbies — even the Chamber of Commerce — are strongly for the stimulus bill!
brian griffin
It’s the economy there. The village has a different economy than the rest of the country. That should be obvious by now, but the fact is that it is diverging even further today.
Here’s an excerpt from an online article by HVS, available on their website. These reports are geared for the hotel industry, but this one says quite a bit about where the villagers are coming from:
No other city in the country has a report like this. Add in how much tax cuts directly benefit the pundit class, and you’ve got the makings of a fully insulated group.
Balconesfault
@DougJ:
Yes – but again – the corporate media probably understands at this juncture just how easy it would be to kill off the Republican Party if they really wanted to.
And they NEED the Republican Party to champion protection of their wealth. Even if they think the RP is full of fruitcases.
Grace Nearing
Well if they are, the Republican party is in trouble since a lot of people are either downgrading their cable packages or eliminating cable service in order to save money. What good is it to be able to pipe propaganda (for fun and profit!) into American homes if Americans no longer can afford the luxury?