A Curious Choice for a Sunday New York Times Op-Ed
by Beverly Mann
crossposted with Annarborist
A Curious Choice for a Sunday New York Times Op-Ed
According to Republican pollster Whit Ayres in an op-ed piece, “It’s Still the Year of the Outsider,” published Sunday in the New York Times, it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to use their “failed policies of the George W. Bush administration” strategy against Republican Senate candidates who were nowhere near Washington during the Bush years.
So Mr. Ayres thinks that what matters is that it would be new lawmakers rather than the same old ones who would reinstate failed policies, not that the policies themselves failed.
He also thinks that because his recent poll shows that a majority of independents think that “[h]aving a president and Congress controlled by the Democrats has not worked well for the country because, from the economy to the deficit and the debt, the Democrats have not gotten the job done”—one of two options respondents were asked to choose from—they also think that having a president and Congress controlled by the Republicans worked well for the country because, from the economy to the deficit and the debt, the Republicans brought the country to its current state.
But he has to just guess about this, because his poll didn’t offer it as an option. Maybe next time.
“they also think that having a president and Congress controlled by the Republicans worked well for the country because, from the economy to the deficit and the debt, the Republicans brought the country to its current state.”
Are you kidding?
“A prominent Democratic pollster is circulating a survey that shows George W. Bush is 6 points more popular than President Obama in “Frontline” districts — seats held by Democrats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as most vulnerable to Republican takeover. That Bush is more popular than Obama in Democratic-held seats is cause for outright fear.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/244181/when-blame-bush-fails-what-do-democrats-do
What people don’t realize is that both parties are doing a horrible job.
I’m uncertain if the Ayres’ idea is correct or not, but I am certain that his NYT Op Ed has no power to alter anyone’s vote in November. The NYT could publish the exact opposite tomorrow and it would never enter the conciousness of 99.9% of America and be forgotten by 0.099999% inside a week.
Just in case the (il)logic escaped you… If you take the “most vulnerable Democratic-held seats”, you are looking at the seats where the Bush vs Obama popularity difference will tend to more in Bush’s favor than average. They are the “most vulnerable” Dems by virtue of their constituencies not favoring Dems. That’s like finding that a proportion of people are sick based on a survey taken only by people in hospitals.
Why on earth did you find that to be noteworthy blurb?
it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to use their “failed policies of the George W. Bush administration” strategy against Republican Senate candidates who were nowhere near
OK, well let’s start with the bat shit crazy Southern, evangelical plantation capitalist notion they are currently selling.
Wall Street has just pulled off the greatest bank heist in history, stealing over a trillion dollars of savings from a generation on the verge of retirement. How about that one. Oh yea, O’bama decided to follow the Harvard business school (you have to be a Harvard grad to be president, even if you are the dumbest POS on earth) solution: Give our graduates the money and STFU. Meanwhile we prosecute athletes who may have lied about performance enhancing drugs. Where are the prosecutions of Loyd Blankenfeld who, IMO, lied like mafioso when he tesified to that august body.
The dems are a far cry from the FDR agenda that made this country, so they may actually lose this thing.
The Democrats in Congress are in trouble. And the Administration isn’t far behind.
I am one of the Independents who is of the opinion that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress suck. I have no problem if all of them are voted out of office.
Here’s part of the op-ed that Mann didn’t cite nor discuss:
“The 2010 election will almost certainly be a referendum on Democratic governance, and people are not happy with it. Almost twice as many voters think the country is on “the wrong track” as think it is going in the “right direction,” according to Pollster.com’s average of recent polls. According to Pollster, Americans disapprove of the job the Democratic-controlled Congress is doing, by 70 percent to 18 percent, and a majority disapprove of the president’s overall performance. (True, the Republican Party isn’t popular either, but that disaffection is likely to have less drag on outsider candidates.)
Moreover, there is little the Democrats can do to change their standing in the eyes of the most important voters, those who don’t identify with either party.”
Beverly Mann is clueless.
Almost twice as many voters think the country is on “the wrong track” as think it is going in the “right direction,” according to Pollster.com’s average of recent polls. According to Pollster, Americans disapprove of the job the Democratic-controlled Congress is doing, by 70 percent to 18 percent, and a majority disapprove of the president’s overall performance. (
Thank you MG for pointing out the incongruety of thinking in our incongruous malaise.Almost like a ” Stockholm Syndrome”. What the citizenry is unable to come to grips with, IMO, is the singularity of thought presented by the small circle of “advisors” purchased by the Ivy League monopoly. Curiously, Paul Krugman, Jamie Galbriathe, Joseph ???? (senior moment), have been excluded.
The American people have no idea what the Ivy league has in store for them, and it si not good. Take the “bipartisain” commission selected by the Ivy league to make the current case for stealing the Social Security savinds. Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, Paul Ryan, Alice Rivlin, Max Baucus ? Give me a break.
O’bama, like Colin and Michael Powell, may be suffering from the curse of the “Black Man” in a white society, afraid to piss the white guys off. FDR and TR, of course, were aristocrats and able to withstand the withering thunder brought to bear on them from their fellow aristocrats.
Our problem is that academic thought has wandered far away from its utility function. Eveyone wants to amke money, and the goddanmnest notions are floated as a trial balloon, Data mining, hitched up to linear regression, has provide the means of argument. Of course linear regression simply fits a set of data to a set of data, minimizing the sum of the squared error. Everyone has the opportunity to select the data set they present.
The attack on SS and Medicare is a battle that has been waged against America since their inception. The final subjugation by the wealthy over the citizenry. It si interesting to watch the republican Plantation capitalists suggesting the repeal of the 14th amendment. My ancestors were immigrant Irish, now the predominant genes swimming in the gene pool. What if the 14th amendment did not exist ?
Regarding the significance of polling data, The next time you read about the percentage of Americans that think this or that keep out front in your mind that 50% of Americans have below average intelligence. That would be an IQ score below 100. About 63% of Americans fall below an IQ of 115. Now go out and find yourself a Wechsler, or some other popular, scale of intelligence. Note how little one needs to know to score 115 on such tests of intellect. My point? Pollsters are presenting complex questions to some of the dumbest people on Earth. Why do you think we have the government that wee have? They represent the lowest common denominator of American society. The fact is that ppolls don’t mean shit.
They are at best 50% right on any two part issue.
Actually, what happens is that these rightwing truisms quickly become the conventional wisdom among the political media, which operates like an echo chamber. So, yes, this op-ed piece—not alone but together with other pieces like it—does have the potential to effect the outcome of the elections.
Actually, what happens is that these rightwing truisms quickly become the conventional wisdom among the political media, which operates like an echo chamber. So, yes, this op-ed piece—not alone but together with other pieces like it—does have the potential to effect the outcome of the elections.
— a.k.a., la savante
My concern with issue polls is less that the questions are complex than that they are either misleading—for example, by representing that the two options offered are mutually exclusive, or that the two options are the only possible options, or that the question or one or both of the options even makes sense—or by misrepresenting the significance of the answers.
Using the example from Ayres’ poll, I myself think that the president and the Congress have not gotten the job done regarding the economy to the deficit and the debt. But in the short term, spurring the economy and reducing the deficit and the debt are mutually exclusive. And the reason the economy is not much worse than it is is that the federal stimulus expenditures were used, for example, to help state and local governments so that they could avoid more draconian layoffs of teachers, firefighters, etc. And the bailouts of GM and Chrysler saved several states, especially Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, from an economic calamity and allowed other regions that have large auto-parts-supplier businesses to avoid large-scale layoffs.
The stimulus wasn’t big enough to do what we needed it to do, though, but that was because Republicans keep saying that a reduction in government spending during this recession will spur the economy. It’s nonsense.
Of course, it would be nice if our Democratic president would actually deign to explain this to the public before the right has so successfully propagandized. He never does, though. He waits and waits and wais and waits, before realizing what is happening in public opinion on an issue. Then, after it’s too late, he comes out and says a few words on it. By then, no one is listening. He does this with every major issue.
It really, really surprises me that he is so deathly slow on the uptake. But he […]