Boss Out of Town wrote:DIU – Different Information Universes. People not only have different sets of facts, they read things in entirely different ways.
Agreed. People bring their own personal experiences and values to everything they view, interpretting things through that. No where is this more true than in the areas of Politics and Religion, and no where is there a greater need for understanding.
As an example, a comment I’ve seen made frequently Hilary-phobes is that our current Secretary of State has a shrill, screechy voice. I invite anyone to listen to listen to her speeches and compare them with clips of a random selection of a dozen other women in public life. If anything, Hilary Clinton’s voice is lower in pitch then most women making political speeches, her cadence is slower and less emotional then the average. It is one of the advantages Barack Obama had over her in their primary contest.
Actually, that is an advantage Obama has over just about anyone he’s run against. But that’s a digression.
He is an inspiring speaker, that is true. People should be judged by the content of what they say, not how they say it. Unfortunately, we have a habit of losing the message to the presentation. Obama, Hillary... let's judge their message, not their delivery.
Sareth wrote:Part of the problem is that the assumption behind the article you quote is that in order to feel that the government is becoming very unresponsive and unreasonable, you have to be some radical nutcase firebrand. The article is viewing anyone who feels that way with alarm.
I think you are reading this way too broadly. On a given day, I would estimate that about 8 out of 10 Americans think that our government is “unresponsive and unreasonable.” The people referred to in the article are the ones who think an appropriate reaction to this circumstance is violence, rebellion, and treason. That is a very substantial difference. Traditional American middle class standards for polite political argument since 1865 do not include threats to shoot people. Because of what happened over the thirty or so years prior to 1865, and the million or so Americans who died because we could not find a way to disagree peacefully on the important issues of the time.
It’s quite possible I am reading overmuch into it. To give you some credit, it does say that “some of their ‘leaders’ seem to be trying to mold them into militias.” However, it does this right after referring to “the right” (not “some of the right,” or “elements of the right” but “the right,” implying a solidarity) as “apocalyptic.”
To my mind, the writer you were quoting is attempting to portray conservatives as a whole as being rampant, drooling revolutionaries readying themselves to tear apart the country. To my mind, that makes the author in question no less disreputable and muck raking than the people he or she highlighted in the article. (I was assuming that you had a similar interpretation, given your follow up commentary?)
Regardless, you yourself estimate that 8 out of 10 Americans consider their government unresponsive and unreasonable. You further point out this does not mean that they are rebels readying their swords. I agree. However, the question becomes “What is to be done about this?” Do we just shrug our shoulders and continue on with this situation? Or do we do something about it. To my mind, the fact that so many state legislatures are sending Congress these Cease and Desist orders is a reasonable act. It is (for the most part) not a call for open revolt. Rather, it is a very legal and reasoning call for Congress to return to its constitutional limitations. Should Congress not comply, and continue to be “unreasonable and unresponsive” then further efforts need to be made, such as seeking to impeach the elected members of the government, or calling for constitutional conventions to re-phrase the Constitution to further emphasis what powers the Federal Government does NOT possess, etc. These are a far cry from calling for an open revolt, but the article you quote does not distinguish enough between these actions and “[urging] her fellow Minnesotans to be ‘armed and dangerous,’ ready to bust caps.”
Honesty does compel me to state that I do believe that, ultimately, people do have the right to replace a government that no longer is responsive to it, by force if necessary. HOWEVER, that should always be an act of desperate last resort. All other options should be exhausted first, and only if it is truly worth the widespread death and destruction that is liable to cause. As a man who has BEEN to war, I really don’t recommend it as a solution to minor disagreements over Social Security policy...
Sareth wrote:President Obama entered office with a 68% approval rating, the second highest ever held by a President on their inauguration. He had a 12% disapproval rating. 20% of the country didn't feel one way or the other. His current approval rating three months later is at 63%. Not bad. Except that now his disapproval rating is up to 27%.
Again, we can look at those numbers from the opposite direction. Obama had approval ratings in the sixties all through the winter, the “high” from the inauguration give him a minor spike, and he’s held to the sixties ever since. The 12% disapproval was statistically dubious and easily discountable as an inauguration day fluke. For any president, keeping up a 70/30 approval ratio for any period of time is a major accomplishment. Hanging onto it in such a viciously divisive political climate, through the uproar of near-constant political scandals, and right through a catastrophic economic collapse is near-miraculous.
Which brings us back to your opening statement: Different Information Universes. In my neck of the woods, people aren’t seeing a continually maintained high approval rating, they are seeing a climbing disapproval rating. In your neck of the woods, what is seen is the high approval rating, and the growing discontent is overlooked. What’s the truth? It’s probably somewhere in the middle. Only time will tell.
Sareth wrote:He hasn't even been in office three months, and he's losing the "neutrals."
Huh? In general, the voting population has been breaking Democratic/Independent/Republican about 40/20/40 over the last few decades. I’m being generous, here. Professional pols tend to assume that only about 10% of the votes are actually in play in most elections. The independent voters in last November’s election broke (IIRC) about 80/20 for Obama; McCain kissed most of them off when Palin turned out to be such a flop as a VP candidate.
McCain himself wasn’t exactly a winning proposition either. Frankly, I saw far too little difference between Obama and McCain to really find a vote for either to be worth beans. I voted third party knowing it would NOT get someone elected, but specifically as a way of stating “There are voters out there that BOTH parties are driving away with disgust. Rethink your approach.”
A president with a 70/30 approval ratio isn’t "losing the 'neutrals,'” he’s winning them overwhelmingly!
Apparently we are using different definitions of “neutral” here. I was referring to the fact that at the time of his election 20% of the country was neutral on the question of whether he was doing a good job or a bad job. Those are the neutrals I was referring to, not the moderates who sit between Conservative and Liberal. Since then, that 20% has almost disappeared, but his approval rating has not climbed by 20%, it’s dropped by 5%. To me, this means that those who were neutral on how he was doing have decided… in the negative. Further, a small percentage of those approving of him initially no longer do. He’s losing these people, not gaining them.
Sareth wrote:Congress is the important thing. Approval for Congress spiked after the inauguration. By spiked I mean that 39% of the nation... only a little more than 1/3rd of the country, approves of the way the actual law creating organ of the government is doing its job. And that spike is due to the fact that only a little over half (59%) of the Democrats approve, up from 17% prior to their take over. Nearly half of the DEMOCRATS can't muster up feelings of support for the government that they control.
You are leaving out an important point, here, that was a consistent part of polling research over the last few years: the reason the Democrats in Congress were so disapproved of after the 2006 elections was because the electorate wanted them to actively oppose Bush and the Republicans and they failed to do so. The current polling reflects the same frustration. The voters want the Democrats to take charge of the congress and pass laws to support the president and the platform they all ran on in 2006 and 2008. How can this possibly be bad news for President Obama?
Because there should be wide spread, overwhelming support and celebration. As you say, the voters (Well, a sufficient percentage of the voters) desire the Democrats to take charge of congress and fix things. But they haven’t. They have failed to do so. It could be argued that they had to try to overcome resistance on the part of an administration they were opposed to, and couldn’t quite do it, but now people are waking up to the fact that Congress and the President are on the same sheet of music. They have nothing to stop them. So if they are still perceived as failing to get the job done, then it is because they are failing to live up to the electorate that gave them the job.
If, as you say, people were disappointed by Congress failing to stand up to Bush and the Republicans, why are they still failing to support Congress? Bush and the Republicans are no longer able to stand in their way. Something else is to blame.
Sareth wrote:But in order for the clear underlying assumptions of the article you quoted to be true, the disgust shown is coming from radical elements out of touch with the rest of America.
Which is quite true. The talking points consistently spouted by the pro-revolution crowd tend to fall into three categories: resentments too broad to counter-argue, Right-wing causes supported by only a tenth to a third, at best, of the populace, and, particularly in the case of Congresswoman Bachmann, fantasies and urban legends. If you can list some that are not, I would be interested in hearing them.
I think I mis-spoke there. I was trying to point out that the article treats conservatism as a whole as being out of touch radicals, and that this is incorrect. My fault there.
The program actually being put through by the Obama administration is pretty much the same as the one he ran on in the primaries and the general election. Most of its elements including important ones, like an active anti-recession program and health reform, had the approval of a solid majority of the voters last year and are still popular this year.
True. Which confuses the hell out of me. Because the electorate put President Obama in office, put Congress in the Capital based on those promises. But when Congress is putting those policies out there, and President Obama is signing them into law, why is support for the government so low? People should be singing the praises of the success of the democratic system. They are, instead, convinced that the government is messing up by the numbers. Makes no sense to me.
(By the way, this whole argument is driving me insane. Not because of you, BOoT. These sorts of debates are what the system is about. No, it’s because I’m having to defend the conservative base, who I dislike just as much as I dislike the liberal base. Well, at least I’m getting to piss off a different group than I was pissing off before the election… It’s hard being a libertarian.)