SOF and I made a Starbucks run this morning, our usual Sunday morning ritual. This particular one was a little different because we had to get up and give one of our cats an insulin shot with his breakfast. Eh. The cost, as I noted in an email, of an aging pet population in our house. He is doing fine, and we are getting used to giving shots--something I have not done since my youth on our small ranch.
Anyway, at Starbucks, I noticed the NYTimes in the corner and read the headlines. One was on how the Democrats are cratering and the election in Massachusetts is proof of that cratering. Opening the WaPo website on my return, and more of this doom and gloom.
Before Christmas, Anglican sent me this from Esquire:
Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn't Done Anything?, which I had not gotten around to reading until this morning. Obama has been anything but a failed President during his first year. But if you turn on the Cable news or read the papers, all you hear is the bs that he has been ineffective and that the public is losing faith in the Democrats.
Of course, if you look at the polling data, you do see that Obama and the Democrats have sagged in the polls. No doubt about that. I have two explanations for that. 1) Obama and the Democrats have sagged, not because they have been to liberal and too adventurous, but because they have not been liberal enough. The stimulus package, while important, was too small and too loaded with tax cuts and other spending that did very little to stimulate the economy. Obama should have pumped billions into infrastructure spending as he first suggested, and put more people to work across the country. Likewise, on healthcare, as
Greg Sargent notes, more people are unhappy with the current proposal because it doesn't go far enough, than those who say it goes too far.
2), and this is certainly related to the last point, but the media is still quite conservative. Sargent's interpretation of the polling data may be flawed, but it is an arguable case. But you won't hear that line on the supposedly liberal mainstream media. Yet, throughout the entire Obama administration, you can always count on the fact that the most conservative voices will be heard on just about every outlet. As
The Atlantic noted, this is not a new phenomenon. In the 19th century, newspapers were commonly so associated with their political bias that they were named after their party affiliation: for example
Wherearewe Republican, or the
Whatever Democrat. For me this is new because we have a good segment of the population who has completely bought the myth of the "liberal media" which makes the conservative nature of our media nearly invisible. You can call that a hat trick for the Republicans. Even though their polling is even lower than Democrats or Obama, they have successfully controlled the message and Conventional Wisdom.
Not to say that Obama has not made some missteps. He certainly has. But I am increasingly tired of our media listening to people who have a track record of always being wrong.
