Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner reports big movement in public opinion (in 50 contested Congressional districts currently held by Republicans) on proposed Republican budget cuts:
These battleground voters are currently split on the Republican plan to cut domestic programs by $61 billion, with 46 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed. This would be a dramatic decline in support from January when Democracy Corps found 60 percent support for the Republicans’ budget cuts.
And after a balanced debate on the issue, support for the Republican budget plan drops sharply, to 41 percent, with a 52 percent majority opposed. The more voters hear from the Republicans on this issue, the less they like. In fact, after hearing the budget debate, 53 percent agree, the more they hear from Republicans like their incumbent, “the less I like.” Just 39 percent say the more they hear, “the more I like.” And this is reflected in the vote, as it moves a net of 5 points towards the Democrats, giving them a 47 to 44 percent lead on the ballot.
GQR is a Democratic pollster, but I’ve found their polls of “battleground” Congressional districts to be very good (they don’t always present “good news”). I think Obama and Harry Reid can face Republicans down on the budget impasse, if they stick to their guns.
Yutsano
Wow…overreach is hitting folks that fast? Hoocodanode?
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
And with that “if”, therein lies the rub.
The problem I’m seeing is that I’m pretty well convinced they’re going to accept as much cuts as is necessary to avoid a complete gov’t shutdown, even if the shutdown would bite the GOP in the ass if it went down.
But then again, I’ve become a total cynical fuck.
Cris
Related news: via Montana Cowgirl, Denny Rehberg’s wagon is hitched to a Tea Party driving him over a cliff. The contest against Tester will probably still be a tough one for Tester, but there are signs of hope here.
Calouste
The debate on budget cuts is going to be as balanced as the debate on HCR. Wonder what this year’s version of death panels will be.
mds
Well, Senate Democrats are already up to $30 billion in attempted “compromise” cuts, and House Republicans are still saying no sale. I wonder how split battleground voters will be in the cuts if Democrats end up embracing virtually all of them.
Punchy
And if my aunt had balls, my uncle would be gay-married.
Sticking to guns is antithetical to Democrats. Not. Gunna. Happen.
Bob Loblaw
Ezra Klein says the Democrats have no use for your polls, GQR, and can’t wait to pass tens of billions of budget cuts in exchange for the dropping of odious House riders.
So take that.
Steve
The White House proposal for cuts puts entitlements, including Medicare, on the table – although it’s not clear exactly what would get cut. Republicans want to cut as much or more in raw dollars, but they are leaving entitlements off the table, pretending everything can be accomplished by cutting non-defense discretionary spending.
The underplayed story of the last election was that Republicans successfully scared millions of seniors to the polls by claiming that the Democrats want to cut Medicare. The current storyline is playing into exactly the same narrative. I am not so sure that public opinion will play out the exact same way, given that (1) Newt may have lost the war of public opinion, but he was the Medicare-cutter in that scenario; and (2) Republicans are far better at framing and manipulating the media and they have had a decade to learn their lessons.
Democrats have not yet articulated an overall principle they are willing to die for in this budget fight. It is more like “we agree there should be major cuts, but um, we want to compromise somewhere in the middle and do it in an overall less harmful way.” But where is the political message in all that?
daveNYC
I’m not so sure. The Republicans, at least in the House, seem to be willing to shut down the government. So they’re playing a game of ‘Let me win or I’ll make sure everyone loses.’ I think that Obama and Reid should stand up to them, but the potential damage the Republicans can cause has me very worried.
Of course I guess it doesn’t matter if Planned Parenthood loses its funding due to a budget passing or due to the government shutting down, so one might as well take a stand.
It is just rather bothersome that we’re stuck dealing with a group of people that want to get rid of the federal government to such an extent that anything that does that would be considered a win.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Yutsano: I worry that because the tide of reaction has risen so high, so soon, it will all get sucked back out to sea, leaving a flat, empty beach of indifference by the time actual electioning occurs.
Feel free to beat this metaphor with a horse.
Comrade Javamanphil
Which is why the over-under on days until the Dems cave is 3.
David Koch
@Punchy: Wisconsin union fight, anyone?
Lol
One thing the Professional Left has in common with Republicans is that they’re both convinced the short-term harm to people a gov’t shutdown would cause is worth it for the long-term political gain.
Mike R.
If they stick to their guns……..if pigs fly……sigh
danimal
The incessant negativism of the Dem ‘netroots’ is a wonder to behold. Yes, the national Democratic Party is a disappointment at times.
But jeez,as DougJ points out, this is a winnable issue and the progressive POV is winning. This is not the time to shoot at the only institution standing between the Republicans and the federal budget.
The longer the budget stays in the limelight, the more the populace is turning away from tea party radicalism. Perhaps that has been a part of the Dem strategy, ya think?
Dennis SGMM
The Democrats will stick to their guns until the Republicans seize control of the narrative. The Dems will then scatter like cockroaches when the Republicans start referring to them as “tax and spend liberals.” The words “jobs,” “entitlements,” and “soshulistic” will be endlessly repeated in a context-free way on the Sunday talk shows. Lather, rinse, repeat.
New Yorker
Well, I hope they let me know when the shutdown occurs, because I’d like to know whether I’m going to be able to visit Crater Lake and Redwoods NP this summer.
jrg
@Steve:
Fast Fact: Over two-thirds of Republican voters believe the budget can be balanced without reducing spending on Social Security or Medicare.
This country will have an honest discussion about deficit reduction the moment current retirees have their benefits cut, not a millisecond before.
A very, very large number of people in this country are too fucking stupid to understand that taxpayers foot the bill for their Medicare.
I’m not suggesting that we eliminate Medicare, but we seem to be heading down that road. If that’s where we wind up, I don’t want my generation (gen X) to be the last ones standing when the music stops.
Another Bob
“I think Obama and Harry Reid can face Republicans down on the budget impasse, if they stick to their guns.”
Well then, it makes it all the more predictable that the Dems are going to do this instead:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703576204576227182502635622.html
“The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.”
Nobody’s better at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory than these worthless losers. I thought this was supposed to be an era of “hope.” All I’m feeling any more is disgust.
joe from Lowell
I don’t understand why everyone is so certain that Obama won’t stand up to them and stick to his guns during a shutdown.
Bill “School Uniforms, End Welfare As We Know It” Clinton stuck to his guns over this.
Obama joined in with Pelosi and Reid in sticking to their guns during Bush’s Social Security Privatization.
Sheesh, people, picking your battles, fighting on ground of your own choosing, isn’t the same thing as never fighting at all.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Bob: If you know the Republicans _aren’t_ going to compromise, it actually makes sense from a PR perspective to let it be known how much Democrats _were_ willing to compromise, no? It takes away the Republicans’ ability to say that the Democrats were dug in so deeply they refused to bargain. That said, the risk to proposing cuts like this is that Republicans take yes for an answer and do it. But I don’t think that’s very likely.
Maude
@danimal:
I don’t have cable tv, so I don’t hear the noise. If the Dems are faily quiet about the Republicans, they are feeding the rope to the Repubs so the R’s can hang themselve.
It would get confusing if the Dems were yelling about all of it. Who said what and so forth.
Poopyman
The bad news is that there is not gonna be an election for 19 months, which is approximately an eternity in politics. It will, as usual, come down to how well the Dems counter the bright shiny thing the Reps throw out in September 2012 to try to divert attention from their previous disastrous 22 months.
Bob Loblaw
@danimal:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-a-huge-win-for-the-tea-party-a-win-for-republicans-and-a-big-loss-for-democrats/2011/03/10/AFPEm3nB_blog.html
For fuck’s sake, this isn’t ignorant speculation by insidious forces looking to bring the administration down.
The current public Democratic counteroffer is Paul Ryan’s old budget. The House GOP plan is to cut $61B overall. The Democratic plan is to cut $30B. They might have to compromise further to avoid a shutdown, they might not.
Either way tens of billions of dollars in moronic cuts are going to be made, and both parties will be responsible for it.
cmorenc
@Bob Loblaw:
The disappearance of “odious riders” will only be (very) temporary, and will return (at latest) in the round of maneuvering for the following fiscal year. Also, the GOP teatards are capable of inventing new varieties of “odious riders” faster than the Dems could ever successfully bargain away pending ones.
The only way to successfully confront a bully is to confront them directly and face them down. Surely Harry Reid and Obama should have learned that by adolescence, and not be ignorant of that essential life-lesson many decades later.
Carnacki
“…if they stick to their guns.”
Hahahaha hahahahaha bwhahahaha. ::wipes tears:: Oh God, thank you for that. I needed a good laugh.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@danimal:
Yeah, except once people find any proposal attached with a ‘Democratic’, ‘Liberal’, or ‘Progressive’ label, you’ll find an instant 20-25% swing that’ll ensure total utter fealty to the ‘cut fucking everything’ view and ensure that our economy remains just as totally fucked except with the added bonus of cannibalizing ‘entitlements’ as well.
Mark S.
It’s complicated:
I was under the impression that a) the rebel forces were stronger than they actually are; b) Qaddafi didn’t have much loyalty and would start having defections; and c) the Libyan army sucked (see Chad). This could turn into a clusterfuck.
ETA: Whoops, I meant to put this in the last thread. OT, I’m a dumbass.
OzoneR
@Steve:
we’re reasonable, they’re insane
Just Some Fuckhead
Seems like every loss comes with a nice looking poll and a premature victory lap.
OzoneR
@joe from Lowell:
Depends on your definition of “sticking to your guns”
To some, that means letting the government shutdown before making any more cuts, to others, he’s already given up. Personally, I thought he stuck to his guns fairly well during the tax cuts debate, he just lost the argument…others didn’t think so.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@OzoneR:
The problem here is that it’s worked almost counter to how it should in theory. 2010 showed us a GOP that was a total stonewall and monotlithic in opposition to the Dems, and it translated into a public that believed that Obama and the Democrats were the hyper partisan saboteurs. In other words, by hyper partisanship, they successfully projected partisanship onto the Dems, and all that hope of being shown as ‘the reasonable folk’ went down the tube because instead the Public saw Dems as intractable, inflexible ideologues, despite the GOP being precisely what the public thought the Dems were.
Passively hoping that the public will finally realize the crazy is a fucking pipe dream.
Dr. Psycho
We get lazy, they win.
They overreach, we win.
[Repeat]
Woodrowfan
@danimal:
The glass isn’t half full or half empty, it’s mostly empty, the water is tainted and the glass is cracked..
FlipYrWhig
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik: That was before Scott Walker.
Bob Loblaw
@OzoneR:
I agree, he fought the good fight and lost. His party wasn’t with him.
But then don’t tell me that I’m supposed to be cheered by this, or that It Was All Part of the Plan. Just say he lost and move on.
Everybody likes to make fun of Boehner. But when you get down to it, the guy has shown he can make bipartisan deals. He’s a boozy, unprincipled, corporate flack, not an ideologue. He’s not Newt, or DeMint or Scott Walker. Ignoring the Tea Party dipshits, nobody with any real power in Washington on either side is spoiling for a shutdown.
Cermet
Wondering – if there is a shutdown, do Soc. Sec. payments and Medicare get stopped? If this really were to occur, it would mainly enrage teabaggers – the biggest welfare queens in the country – there’d be zero chance most thugs would standup and continue to vote against restoring funds …surely they’d cave after a short stoppage proving their credentials but getting the real welfare queens their money … win/win considering they’d get 22 months to paint all too willing demorats as the enemy?
Corner Stone
What are their “guns” in this instance? I haven’t seen them stake out any territory except that billions of cuts will be made.
I don’t understand what it is you think they’re defending.
gex
Turns out that cuts are for other people. I feel for the white working class, eager to cut taxes and spending on those wasteful “others” only to find out they are part of the wasteful “others” too. Must be nice not to be at the front of the line.
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw: President Obama set the terms of the tax cut deal. How was that “fighting the good fight”?
He staked out early he would do whatever was required to get the MC tax cuts in place.
FlipYrWhig
@danimal: An issue or event comes before the public.
Netroots: Oh my God! What a disaster! Oh Jesus Christ I can’t believe how horrible this is going to be, oh no, oh no, what are we getting ourselves into, how come I’m the only one who notices these things, oh jesus God we’re all gonna die.
Something bad happens.
Netroots: I knew it! I tried to warn you but you just didn’t listen, it was obvious, oh God why does this always happen, you have to listen to me next time, so many disasters, oh jesus what are we gonna do, maybe Canada is nice, corporate power, police state.
Something not-bad happens.
Netroots: You got lucky this time. It was an obvious disaster and I tried to warn you with every fiber of my being, and it’s not that I was wrong, it’s that I was less right than I expected, but still totally right, because any fool knows to predict the biggest possible fiasco as the outcome of every event, because that way even when it doesn’t happen it still feels virtuous to have been upset about it first.
goblue72
Shut it down. I lived through the last GOP give shutdown. It sucked but the sky didn’t fall in. Just like the sky wouldn’t have fallen in if we had forced the GOPs hand on the tax cuts in December. We are so scared of shirt term pain that we keep trading stuff away that inevitably leads to greater long term pain. Man up and deal with it. These nuts aren’t backing down until we make them lose.
Dennis SGMM
@Cermet:
According to Politifact (Among others), the Social Security Administration will continue mail out checks if there’s a government shutdown. It continued to do so during the 1995 shutdown. The short of it is that Congress does not appropriate the funds disbursed by Social Security.
Svensker
@Woodrowfan:
The reactor thread is down a few posts.
ericblair
@Cermet:
My understanding is Social Security no, especially for direct deposit, but any changes or new beneficiaries won’t get processed until there’s funding in place. I don’t know about Medicare reimbursements.
I’m wondering about ag subsidies myself; I’m not a farmer and have no personal experience with it, but you’d think this is pretty time-critical.
gypsy howell
What guns?
bago
Yutsano: The lights are timed so that the neural latency will cause you to perceive the picture. Just shake your head back and forth while looking at the blinkies. As your visual field shifts over time and horizontal orientation, the image will appear, much like how a dot matrix printer works.
kerFuFFler
@jrg:
Yeah, Medicare NEEDS to be reigned in. Unfortunately, it seems like the Republicans are content to let it run on it’s ruinous course and when it blows up they can say,”See, guvmint programs just don’t work!” Too bad this forces Democrats to be the grownups in the room and make the unpopular but necessary changes to a program they support.
Since many voters are too ignorant to understand the nature and size of the problem, they refuse to elect any candidate who says that cuts and/or tax increases are necessary. Then there are no grownups in the room….
We need young people to vote. And AARP leadership needs to explain to their membership that they cannot reasonably complain about leaving a big national debt for their descendants when they insist on not altering the program that is one of the main contributors to the problem.
Dennis SGMM
@kerFuFFler:
Sure we do, and we need more Latinos to vote. We also need to start winding down the defense budget, to stop paying subsidies to agribusiness and to start collecting realistic royalties from the oil companies. I look forward to the Winter Olympics being staged in Hell as soon as those things come to pass.
FlipYrWhig
@kerFuFFler: It’s as simple as this, I think. Many people, older people chief among them, have embraced the idea that they _earned_ the benefits they receive, so they shouldn’t be cut. If anything needs to be cut, they think, it should be all that stuff that Other People haven’t really earned, but act like they deserve anyway, those ungrateful bastards, cut them off and then, easy-peasy, problem solved.
Mattminus
LOL @ democrats winning a fight. If the fight looks winnable, they’ll concede before it’s even begun.
OzoneR
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Oh, I don’t think they’ll realize it. Nor do I think trying to fight them will do any good either. I don’t know what will work. I think the Dems are going to stick with the “lets look reasonable” strategy though, probably because it tends to work when the GOP is actually IN power.
OzoneR
@Corner Stone:
yeah because telling the middle class “I will raise your taxes if I have to” is going to get them to rally behind him?
gex
@OzoneR: I agree. The *only* aspect of the Naderite, let them just win attitude that makes any sense to me is the very real fact that a lot of the people who back the GOP won’t change their minds on anything until it affects them. In other words, there are no arguments to be made or facts presented. They’re like drug addicts, they’ll never fix the problem til they admit there’s a problem.
Mark S.
Ezra:
Are they really insane enough to default on the debt? I’m sure the teabaggers are, but Boehner and Cantor?
I know I beat this to death, but defaulting on the debt would be the end of the world as we know it. It would be like if a significant wing of one party was advocating nuclear war with Russia. But our press is so dumb these days they would just have to leave it at that and we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR:
How about not making it the only promised part of the deal, over and over?
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Stop beat the horse; it’s already dead.
rikryah
let them shut down the guvmint
joe from Lowell
@FlipYrWhig:
Something good happens: You must now all bow down before the awesome power of my protest tactics, which singlehandedly forced the Obama administration to do what they’ve spent a year and a half saying they were going to do, but were totally lying about.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: IMO, the Bush Tax Cut Deal extension is the most calamitous domestic policy decision in recent memory. And doubly so for a Democratic politician to sign off on.
We as a nation will be seeing the fucking grim reaper come for what’s left of the middle class, mainly because of what this deal signaled and signified. The “budget cut debate” is just the most recent outcropping of the tax cut deal.
It’s not a dead horse, it’s a stark policy decision and should be recognized for what it means moving forward.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Alright, I don’t agree, but, if you see it that way, you are right that it is not beating a dead horse. I thought you were just rehashing one of the many purist v. pragmatist arguments for the lulz.
JohnR
“.. if they stick to their guns.”
Pigs could fly if they had jet-packs to go with their wings.
Cris
And they will refuse to admit there’s a problem, even as they lie shaking on the sidewalk, clawing at their pores and spitting out teeth.
kerFuFFler
Yeah, that’s a major problem. The truth is that WAY more is spent on people in all income brackets than what they have put in. People expect the gourmet, all you can eat buffet when they have paid for a tuna sandwich. Check out the graph (scary!) that shows how many HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of DOLLARS are spent PER PERSON in excess of what they have contributed on average. Women in the lowest income bracket get on average a net benefit of $277,000. Even men in the highest bracket get more than a $100,000 net benefit (amount spent minus amount paid in).
Republicans have made noises about changing some aspects of medicare “down the road” (so the old people who vote for them won’t get mad) but a fair readjustment should not just target the next generation with increased taxes and reduced services.
It is uncomfortable to discuss, but people should let their elderly relatives in on the facts. Many of them would be truly appalled at the idea of putting their kids and grandkids hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by insisting that Medicare not be touched. AARP is not interested in informing them, so that leaves it to their kids.
BTW, I’m getting old myself but understand that it may make sense to raise the age limit along with other changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fig._169_-_Net_lifetime_Medicare_benefits.JPG
bcinaz
@Calouste: What balanced debate?
Tax Analyst
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Shouldn’t that be “…with a dead horse”?
Tax Analyst
@Woodrowfan:
…and full of beaten, dead horses as well.
My advice is to throw the baby out with that tainted water, but take care not to cut him first on that cracked glass. That would be a dead baby of a different color.