I find increasingly that posts entitled Time From Dems To Panic? are driving me around the freaking bend.
There is nothing wrong with analyzing how the public is responding to the various initiatives and messaging of each of the political parties, per se. But pace my post on politics and language, it drives me berzerker how we complain endlessly about the empty horse racing for power that is our politics and then either consciously or unconsciously utilize language that only reinforces and entrenches the conception of politics as: empty horse racing for power.
And perhaps, for all the solid coverage that Nate Silver and the crew provided over the course of the 2008 election, that is the ultimate limitation of sites like FiveThirtyEight. At base, they’re kind of just sophisticated horse racing enthusiasts. Being able to parse the numbers is good and important work, I respect Silver et al. for doing it and appreciate the information they come up with. But the numbers won’t necessarily tell you whether an idea is good or bad, whether an argument is sound or fallacious, and whether a politician/political party has the kind of integrity for which I think most voters really yearn.
It might seem like a persnickety point, but I remain convinced that if we are ever going to change the tenor of our politics, we have to start with a hyper-conscious critique of how we ourselves articulate and frame our politics. Otherwise, we’re really just spinning our tires with a shit-eating-grin on our face as we refer to our efforts as “good punditry”.
(h/t: Sullivan — who, to his credit, pushes the long view in terms of the relevant numbers)
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Dude, the Republicans will totally win the 2024 elections. It’s in the cards, man.
*rage*
It’s not often that Tool lyrics make it into blog post titles.
GOOD SHOW.
I recommend ‘Relax, turn around and take my hand.’ for the next one.
I’m not getting it. The public opinion is not always transparent but it’s not completely amorphous either. It’s becoming more and more clear that the D’s leadership in Washington is bad for the country and unpopular (especially wrt health care but not limited to that). We need people like Nate and Charlie Cook to drill down on the unpopular part or else liberals would try to believe that everything they’re doing is great.
Of course just because health care reform or something else is unpopular doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong. But, what’s frustrating in this case is that liberals want to believe that they’re understanding of the issue is binding on everybody else so in essence they refuse to explicitly advocate for it, and then try to blame our team for being “obstructionist”.
My understanding is that there is broad and strong support for heath care reform in the country, including a strong public option. The dissatisfaction with the Dems seems to be frustration that they are not proceeding quickly and clearly enough to enact legislation the public is strong behind.
“My understanding is that there is broad and strong support for heath care reform in the country, including a strong public option.”
Well, that’s a very poor understanding. It is true, that the “public option”, when polled by itself, has gotten majority support in some polls. But of course the public option doesn’t exist by itself, it wouldn’t make much sense if it did. And it’s very clear, from several sets of data, that the Democrat’s direction in health care reform is not popular.
“The dissatisfaction with the Dems seems to be frustration that they are not proceeding quickly and clearly enough to enact legislation the public is strong behind.”
That is a fair summary of the dissatisfaction with the Dems of the Dems and other liberals. The rest of the country disapproves as well, but for other reasons, the things you hear about in the Tea Parties and so on.
They shoot horses, don’t they?
“When will people realize that Obama is a strategist, not a tactician? If you cannot see the long-term game here, and the fact that the Republicans are merrily laying the foundation for their own potential implosion, you’re not watching closely enough.”
This has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. The Republicans might implode, but they aren’t in any more danger of imploding than Democrats. If Sullivan can’t see that it’s government as a whole setting up potential implosion, then he’s not watching closely enough. There’s something very funny about someone pretending to know the real strategy in the theater of the absurd in Washington D.C.
Doubling down on statism while the Republicans eat themselves is not a strategy — it’s a fast track to destruction. As a matter of fact, statism as a long term strategy would be pretty funny, too, if it wasn’t so dangerous — just look at the long term strategies of the murderous clowns of the 20th century. The Democrats do need to worry, because they are part of the American public. The worrying part is no longer related to which party has power, it’s a matter of worrying about the nation’s health — Democrats won’t have any special immunization.
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