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Saturday, April 04, 2009

America has not forgotten
Posted by Jill | 7:12 AM
Despite the best efforts of Republican guests on cable news shows to rewrite history to erase the Bush years so that the Presidency passed directly from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, with the 9/11 attacks taking place on Clinton's watch and the economic collapse on Obama's, it seems that America's people have not forgotten who ran things for the last eight years:
Neither George W. Bush's deliberate silence about the Obama administration nor Dick Cheney's ready criticism of it appear to have altered U.S. public perceptions about either man. The former president and former vice president are each viewed unfavorably by 63% of Americans, very similar to where they stood with the public in their final White House years.

The last reading on Bush's favorability that Gallup recorded during his presidency came in a Jan. 9-11, 2009, survey. At that time, 40% of Americans viewed him favorably and 59% unfavorably. However, this represented an unusual spurt in positive feelings toward Bush, possibly due to changes in media coverage of the embattled president as his term ended, or because of Americans' generally buoyant mood leading up to Inauguration Day. (Barack Obama's favorable reading in the same survey was also higher than in previous and subsequent polling.)

[snip]

Despite Bush's seemingly "post-partisan" stance toward the new president, Democrats' reactions to Bush remain overwhelmingly negative. Only 10% have a favorable view of him and 89% an unfavorable view, little different from their views of him in August of last year -- at the height of the rancorous election season.

Perhaps it's because Americans aren't as enamored of "post-partisanship" as the media (and Gallup, apparently) want to believe -- not when it results in the kind of utter nonsense we've seen coming out of Republicans this year. Americans did not reject "partisanship" at the polls last November, they rejected the Republican policies of endless war and unlimited shoveling of working- and middle-class cash into the pockets of people who already have more money than they, their children, and their grandchildren could spend in a dozen lifetimes.

For nearly three decades, we tried it their way -- and it has been a miserable failure. The Republicans may have decided they wanted to end both the Great Society and the New Deal, and Americans bought it because they were fat and happy as a result of these programs. But now we have seen what happens when you gut the middle class and tell them that the upper class will "trickle down" a few bucks upon them if you just give them enough. And last November, this country successfully battled its Fear of a Black Planet and elected a man that the opposition had painted as a secret Muslim, a terrorist, and everything else you can name -- just to get out from under these disastrous Republican policies.

George W. Bush can remain silent until the day he dies, and until Americans can feel confident in their future again, we will remember who it was that did this to us.

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Friday, February 06, 2009

The disconnect between what the Beltway pundits say and what Americans think
Posted by Jill | 7:47 PM
Harry Reid and the Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans are acting like the Republicans won the election in November, seemingly about to pass a "stimulus bill" a full 42% of which is tax cuts (which are not stimulative with any degree of efficiency), and the punditocracy is busy opining already, 2 weeks into President Obama's term, that he may be the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps if the Democrats in Washington, and yes, that includes President Reach Out And Pull Back a Bloody stump, would ask people out here in consensus reality what they think, they might be more willing to tell their corporate masters to go stuff it:
President Barack Obama had to face tough questioning from the media this week over his process for choosing his top advisers after Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer withdrew their nominations for failing to pay back taxes. But Americans' support for Obama is hardly shaken, with fewer than one in five saying they are less confident now in Obama's ethical standards and his ability to manage the government than they were before he took office. A majority say they are "more confident" in both regards.

[snip]

Most of those who say they now have less confidence in Obama are Republican identifiers. Thus, a great number of those who claim to be affected in a negative way probably did not have a great deal of confidence in Obama to begin with.

Additionally, the president's 65% job approval rating in Feb. 2-4 Gallup Poll Daily tracking is essentially the same as it has been throughout his brief time in office.


And that 65% approval rating is what the talking heads of the media and Congressional Republicans have made it a mission to whittle away. Because the mission of restoring Republican power trumps all. And Democrats are so used to crouching in a fetal position in the corner, they've forgotten how to do anything else.

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