Rasmussen reports a good deal of disenchantment in the land and finds that 88% of “Mainstream Voters” are angry — only the members of the Political Class are relatively content:
75% Are Angry At Government’s Current Policies…Eighty-nine percent (89%) of Republicans are angry with the government’s current policies…78% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats share that anger, but Republicans are three times as likely as Democrats to be Very Angry.
The divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters, however, is remarkable. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Mainstream voters are angry, but 84% of the Political Class are not…68% of Mainstream voters don’t think the leaders of either major political party have a good understanding of what the country needs today. Sixty-one percent (61%) of the Political Class disagree.
Let’s do the math. 88% of Mainstram Voters are angry, and they represent 81% of likely voters. So about 72% of likely voters are a tad peeved. It doesn’t look like a good year to be an incumbent, particularly an incumbent who refuses to listen.
Rasmussen separates the world into the Mainstream and the Political Class as follows:
we now label the groups Mainstream and Political Class. The questions used to calculate the Index are:
– Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more — the American people or America’s political leaders?
– Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?
– Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?
To create a scale, each response earns a plus 1 for the populist answer, a minus 1 for the political class answer, and a 0 for not sure.
Those who score 2 or higher are considered a populist or part of the Mainstream. Those who score -2 or lower are considered to be aligned with the Political Class. Those who score +1 or -1 are considered leaners in one direction or the other.
In practical terms, if someone is classified with the Mainstream, they agree with the mainstream view on at least two of the three questions and don’t agree with the Political Class on any…
76% of voters generally trust the American people more than political leaders on important national issues. Seventy-one percent (71%) view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors. On each question, a majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters share those views.
The good news is this: “When leaners are included, 81% are in the Mainstream category, and 12% support the Political Class.”
We’re big fans of advertising. The Lucky Strike and Kodak Carousel episodes of Mad Men are beautiful miniatures of a certain time in American life and American business. The Cheap Trick Audi commercial in the Super Bowl seems to fit these times. It’s ambiguous. Is it an endorsement or repudiation of exquisite environmental sensitivities? (Every scene but one mocks the environmentalists.)
Very clever. Whether you think the Green Police are good or bad, buy an Audi. Strategic ambiguity that works much better than the most recent Tarantino movie. And they thought it through. If you Google Dream Police, the first sponsored link is to the commercial. Nicely done.
By the time of the Democratic convention that nominated George McGovern, the New Left had acquired an important foothold in the governing apparatus of the Democratic Party; this influence has only grown over time. The consequences of this are much in evidence today in Congress and the administration. In a way, the Tea Party Movement is a reaction to this (though it is also a reaction to the business-as-usual Republicans as well). On the one hand there is, in the Democratic Party, considerable support for a tops-down, command and control model of governance and the economy, and on the other hand there is, seemingly all of a sudden, this bottoms-up group that came from nowhere and just took off like some YouTube video that gets tens of millions of hits.
Like the education establishment, the Old Media have mostly been allied with and supportive of the leftward leaning trend. This has made it seem like the majority of the country is deep blue, when in fact the bluest areas of the nation are highly concentrated — and several are notably major media centers. Conservatives outnumber liberals 45-19 in America, though you’d never guess that from watching TV or reading the paper. When the history of this era is written, one of the fascinating aspects may be how the internet and the other New Media helped ordinary people to see for themselves that the worldview of those running the Old Media wasn’t so dominant after all.
Mark Steyn reviews the history of the melting glaciers:
“We’re facing the risk of extreme runoff, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it. A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia — the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze — where three billion people live. That’s almost half the world’s population.” And NASA agrees, and so does the UN Environment Programme, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Wildlife Fund, and the respected magazine the New Scientist. The evidence is, like, way disproportionate.
But where did all these experts get the data from? Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.
In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high” — i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”
WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.
That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.
Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.
But so what? His musings were wafted upwards through the New Scientist to the World Wildlife Fund to the IPCC to a global fait accompli: the glaciers are disappearing. Everyone knows that. You’re not a denier, are you? India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says there was not “an iota of scientific evidence” to support the 2035 claim. Yet that proved no obstacle to its progress through the alarmist establishment. Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in” — for political reasons.
From the corpse-man to the real corpse, things just seem to get weirder and weirder with what comes out of the mouth of this fellow Obama in Washington. When even former fawning worshipper Evan Thomas knows something’s wrong, it’s become painfully obvious that something has gone horribly awry.
We got an email from Mitch Stewart today, as follows:
An alarming new study shows that health care costs increased last year at the fastest rate in more than a half century. Health care spending rose to an estimated $2.5 trillion in 2009, or $8,047 per person — and is now projected to nearly double by 2019. If we don’t act, this growing burden will mean more lost jobs, more families pushed into bankruptcy, and more crushing debt for our nation.
The conclusion is clear: This isn’t a problem we can kick down the road for another decade — or even another year. We need to pass health reform now. We’re incredibly close. But too many in Washington are now saying that we should delay or give up on reform entirely. So we need to make it crystal clear that Americans understand the stakes for our economy and our lives, and that we want action.
Can you write a letter to the editor of your local paper right now? In just five minutes of your time, you can tell thousands of readers about this new report on spiraling costs, and why abandoning reform is just not an option.
President Obama and many allies in Congress are working hard to finish the job — but we can’t rest until it’s done. Your note will help break through the Washington spin and show members of Congress and the media what local voters really believe. Click here to get started…
It’s clear that we’re in the fight of our lives to pass real reform. But after a century of trying, the finish line is finally in sight. As President Obama reminded us all in his State of the Union address, we’re fighting for our families and our country — and we don’t quit…
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
If Obama’s dismissal of Blanche Lincoln is any indication, these guys continue to be committed to a course that is hard to see as a winner — politically or economically. But best of luck!
George Will suggests that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (30% tax reduction, AAA rating) and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan (Roadmap for America’s future) could be President and VP in 2013; he discusses some changes they might make in the rather obvious entitlement problem looming for this nation:
Funding entitlements — especially medical care and pensions for the elderly — requires reinvigorating the economy. Ryan’s map connects three destinations — economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.
To make the economy — on which all else hinges — hum, Ryan proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health care tax credit (see below).
Today’s tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest. Since the 1986 tax simplification, the code has been recomplicated more than 14,000 times — more than once a day.
At the 2004 Republican convention, thunderous applause greeted George W. Bush’s statement that the code is “a complicated mess” and a “drag on our economy” and his promise to “reform and simplify” it. But his next paragraphs proposed more complications to incentivize this and that behavior for the greater good.
Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world’s second highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive — and more able and eager to hire.
Medicare and Social Security would be preserved for those currently receiving benefits, or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today). Both programs would be made permanently solvent.
Universal access to affordable health care would be guaranteed by refundable tax credits ($2,300 for individuals, $5,700 for families) for purchasing portable coverage in any state. As persons under 55 became Medicare eligible, they would receive payments averaging $11,000 a year, indexed to inflation and pegged to income, with low-income people receiving more support.
Ryan’s plan would fund medical savings accounts from which low-income people would pay minor out-of-pocket medical expenses. All Americans, regardless of income, would be allowed to establish MSAs — tax-preferred accounts for paying such expenses.
Ryan’s plan would allow workers under 55 the choice of investing more than one-third of their current Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts similar to the Thrift Savings Plan long available to, and immensely popular with, federal employees. This investment would be inheritable property, guaranteeing that individuals will never lose the ability to dispose every dollar they put into these accounts.
Ryan would raise the retirement age. If, when Congress created Social Security in 1935, it had indexed the retirement age (then 65) to life expectancy, today the age would be in the mid-70s. The system was never intended to do what it is doing — subsidizing retirements that extend from one-third to one-half of retirees’ adult lives.
Ryan seems to be a very serious guy. Here he discusses his ideas with ideological opponent Ezra Klein and the interchange is civil, detailed and thoughtful. (HT: Charles Lane)
Charles Lane recounts President Obama’s words to (soon to be ex-Senator) Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, which sound an awful lot like a lecture:
If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression — we don’t tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don’t put in place any insurance reforms, we don’t mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they’re doing now because we don’t want to stir up Wall Street — the result is going to be the same. I don’t know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place…
If our response ends up being, you know, because we don’t want to — we don’t want to stir things up here, we’re just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don’t know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don’t know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.
Lanes’s reflections follow on Obama’s comments:
he cast Lincoln’s plea for a bit more centrism as a call for a return to Bushism — the “exact same proposals that were in place for the last eight years.” That’s not what she was advocating; it’s not what any Democrat who’s questioning his approach is advocating. But the president set up this strawman, and he pummeled it, rather than engaging Lincoln’s valid concerns.
The second striking thing was how easily he appeared to write off Lincoln politically. Conceding nothing, he implied that her defeat was not only a foregone conclusion, but also an acceptable price to pay for staying the course on policy. To be sure, maybe the whole thing was just kabuki — Lincoln standing up to the president for the benefit of the folks back home who don’t like him, and Obama obligingly playing his part. But it sure looked pretty spontaneous to me.
The Lincoln-Obama debate epitomized the left-vs.-center debate within the Democratic Party these days, which is much broader than health care, even though it is necessarily focused on that for the moment. The question is whether the party should cut its losses on comprehensive health reform, or keep pursuing it despite the political headwinds, on the grounds that even an initially unpopular bill would be easier to defend than no bill at all.
David Plouffe, back in the White House to direct post-Massachusetts political operations, favors nailing the party’s colors to the health-care mast.
Controversialist Jacob Weisberg in Slate takes a dim view of this democratic republic:
Down With the People…Blame the childish, ignorant American public — not politicians — for our political and economic crisis.
In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama’s tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation.
These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.
Well at least the fellow is consistent. He said only the nastier impulses of the people could stop Obama from being elected in 2008. And he wanted an Obama cabinet full of semi-autistic geniuses.
There used to be a lighter touch in matters like this. Wikipedia: Adlai “Stevenson’s wit was legendary. During one of Stevenson’s presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to ‘get the vote of every thinking man’ in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, ‘Thank you, but I need a majority to win’.”
This is a little painful to watch, as if neither Stephen Colbert nor his audience quite likes making a fool of Attorney General Eric Holder. Still, the point is well made. HT: Polipundit
William Kaletsky has a piece we mostly disagree with but he makes a good point. Times:
China unambiguously favours domestic industries over Western exporters and investors. China’s determination to run huge export surpluses and maintain an undervalued exchange rate gives America and Europe cheap consumer products; but it also means lost jobs and the accumulation of ever-more foreign debts.
We’ve talked about the problems of the structural imbalances between Asia and the West previously. William Pesek of Bloomberg points to some potential dangers:
China’s currency reserves grew by more than the gross domestic product of Norway in 2009. Its $2.4 trillion of reserves is a bubble all its own, one growing before our eyes with nary a peep out of those searching for the next big one…if economies were for sale, China could use the $453 billion of reserves it amassed last year to buy Greece and Vietnam and have enough left over for Mongolia…
China aims to diversify out of U.S. Treasuries into other assets and commodities. The question that governments are grappling with is which markets are deep enough to absorb China’s riches? Gold? Oil? Euro-area debt?…Like all pyramid schemes, there’s no easy end in sight and things could end badly. If the dollar collapses, panicked selling by central banks looking to limit losses would shake global markets more than the U.S. credit crisis has.
It is in a way strange that China has not diversified its holdings into international equities, though it had laid the groundwork to do so more than two years ago. From the US standpoint, the clear need is to stop exporting debt, to become self-sufficient in critical areas, and to promote US exports where possible. Our current course is not sustainable.
Democrats as well as Republicans are openly critical of the President these days:
“The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn’t be spending their money,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. “Las Vegas is suffering through one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and we cannot afford for the President to bring us down any further,” added Republican Senator John Ensign. “Nevada has one of the most distressed economies in the country, and the President has done little to focus on job creation over the past year. Discouraging people from coming to our state to make a political point adds insult to injury,” said Republican Congressman Dean Heller.
The mayor of Las Vegas, a former Democrat not affiliated with a political party, was even nastier: ““He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but when he hurt our economy by his ill conceived rhetoric, we didn’t think it would happen again, but now that it has I want to assure you, when he comes I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington…”
Meanwhile, the President said: “If anybody’s searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you, the answer is not to do nothing.” Clearly we are not objective in this matter, but we get the feeling that the subtext of the Democratic critics’ comments on Las Vegas is: “wake up before it’s too late.”
The Obama administration’s budget director spoke about the proposed $3.8 trillion budget and its accompanying (and understated) $1.3 trillion deficit, saying that the administration is making the “tough choices” when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money:
Our budget spurs job creation, puts U.S. on fiscally sustainable path…we are also making tough choices in the budget: cutting what doesn’t work or isn’t necessary and investing in what will help to expand the economy and employment in the coming years. The budget thus institutes a three-year non-security discretionary freeze that will save $250 billion over the next decade. As I have said many times before and will again (since it’s still true!), the key to our long-term fiscal future is fiscally responsible health insurance reform.
As an AP story said in a different context: “NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino defended putting more money into the programs…’This budget is implementing the president’s nuclear vision,’ he said.” Indeed.
D’Aleo and Watts have produced a 110 page paper on problems with the measurement of surface temperature in the matter of AGW. It makes for interesting reading. There is also an amusing piece in the China Daily that refers to the ancient Chinese wisdom that two errors can be discounted but the third error constitutes a tipping point — the IPCC has at least three errors of significance, and a whole lot more if you take into account the work of the gentlemen above. It would seem that it’s only a matter of time now. HT’s: Powerline, AT
The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review. In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch’s request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws…
President Barack Obama, before he was sworn in, had stated his preference for a playoff system. In 2008, Obama said he was going to “to throw my weight around a little bit” to nudge college football toward a playoff system, a point that Hatch stressed when he urged Obama last fall to ask the department to investigate the BCS…Hatch, a Utah Republican, was steamed that his home state team was deprived of getting a chance to play for the title last year.
“I’m encouraged by the administration’s response,” he said in a statement. “I continue to believe there are antitrust issues the administration should explore, but I’m heartened by its willingness to consider alternative approaches to confront the tremendous inequities in the BCS that favor one set of schools over others. The current system runs counter to basic fairness that every family tries to instill in their children from the day they are born.”
Under the BCS, the champions of six conference have automatic bids to play in top-tier bowl games, while the other conferences don’t. Those six conferences also receive more money than the other conferences, although the BCS announced this week that the ones that don’t have automatic bids will receive a record $24 million from this year’s bowl games.
As a reader put it at Instapundit: “If they try to control how much sugar I drink in sodas and how college football is played, I can’t think of anything they would not try to control. And, Orrin Hatch is equally to blame. His role lends credence to the idea that the ‘old guard’ Republicans are equally unprincipled.” Indeed.
Michael Barone notes some trends in recent polling that appear to be positive for the GOP:
Republicans didn’t take the lead on the generic ballot — which party’s candidate will you vote for in House races — until March 9-15, 2009, in Rasmussen polling (which samples likely voters and whose results have therefore leaned more Republican than those of other pollsters since Barack Obama’s inauguration). Republicans since took a lead in the NPR poll (July 22-26), Gallup (November 5-8), Bloomberg News (December 3-7), Battleground (December 6-10), CNN/Opinion Research (January 8-10) and Democracy Corps (January 7-11)…
Gallup analyst Jeffrey M. Jones provides useful historic perspective. “Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters’ preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.”…
The current results are as favorable for Republicans or more so than the CNN/Gallup polls taken at this point in the 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004, cycles in which Republican House candidates received more votes than Democratic candidates . All of which leads me to second Charlie Cook’s suggestion that if the election were held today, Republicans would gain more than the 40 seats they need to get a majority in the House. I would go further and say that if the election were held today Republicans would do better than in 1994 or 2002
John Judis in TNR noticed much the same thing the other day; by contrast Mark Mellman’s analysis of Massachusetts seems a little convoluted. However, the election is still nine months away. We’ll have to see what course corrections the Democrats undertake, and what blunders the Republicans manage to make in the meantime.
Mark Mellman fuzzes up the statistics and the polling in an interesting piece in The Hill:
Were they using their ballots to attack President Barack Obama? Not according to the data. A post-election poll from The Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard found voters approved of the way the president is handling his job by 61 percent to 37. Even Rasmussen found a clear 53 percent majority approving of the president. Just 23 percent of voters overall, and far fewer than half of Scott Brown voters, said their vote was cast in opposition to the president. None of this can be construed as a rejection of President Obama.
Voters’ much-discussed “anger” was actually more likely to be directed at Republicans than at the president. Just 16 percent told pollsters they were “angry” about the administration’s polices, with nearly half again as many expressing anger at the policies put forward by Republicans in Congress.
Perhaps Massachusetts voters exempt the president personally but intended to send a strong signal of disapproval to Democrats more broadly. Not so much. Congressional GOPers suffered from a much more negative image in Massachusetts than did their Democratic counterparts. Net favorability for Senate Democrats, while hardly strong, was still 27 points higher than for Senate Republicans…
The Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll found a narrow 43 percent-48 percent margin opposed to a content-less healthcare plan. Rasmussen found 47 percent in favor, 51 percent opposed. Our poll had very similar results, but just 31 percent of voters opposed the bill because it went “too far,” while the balance of opponents felt it did not go far enough.
Okay. Please feel free to believe this if you like and good luck. 80% of Brown voters opposed Obamacare, according to the WaPo poll in the first paragraph — and 60% “strongly opposed” it. (BTW, Rasmussen reports continued fallout from Massachusetts, and not the kind that Mellman would approve of.)
Someone at IBD did a lot of homework to come up with this chart. It is, in its way, a perfect miniature of the cognitive dissonance in America today. There’s a President who can appear sensible and centrist when he wants to, and there’s a large group of Americans who are gravely concerned about the next three years, because they see a President who instinctively veers left and doesn’t understand the world very well. How to make sense of this?
Depending on your political point of view, the President’s cabinet might look great; for others it’s evidence of GIGO. What is undeniable is that a President’s cabinet is, in some sense, a reflection of his worldview. Thus it seems clear from the chart that President Obama’s differs considerably from the fairly consistent pattern of his predecessors. Over 90% of his cabinet has no private sector experience, a disturbing number when you think about it.
The private sector world and the public sector world are very different places, as statistics illustrate, and have different understandings of incentives and economics. Oftentimes, there’s little overlap between the two. So it’s not surprising that President Obama’s words, however well delivered, can have very different meanings to different audiences. In a sense, there really are Two Americas, and 2010 will probably tell us a little bit about which one is larger. (HT: Powerline)
Who knows what is the Left and what is the Right anymore? Here’s an excerpt from an audiotape of that renowned fighter against global warming, Mr. Osama bin Laden:
Noam Chomsky was right when he pointed out that there is a similarity between the policies of America and those of mafia gangs. They are the true terrorists…
The talk about climate change is not an intellectual indulgence. Rather, it is a reality. All of the industrialized countries, and especially the large ones, bear the responsibility for the crisis of the greenhouse effect. Most of them, though, rallied around the Kyoto accords, and agreed to limits on emissions of harmful gases. However Bush Jr., and Congress before him, rejected this accord in order to please the large corporations, which are themselves the ones responsible for speculation, monopolies, and the rise in the cost of living. And they are behind globalization and its tragic consequences.
Meanwhile, former Marxist, J.D. Salinger stalker, and crack-cocaine experimenter (its in the book) Roger Simon had this to say about a recent Scientific American article:
their boneheaded article Negating “Climategate“: Copenhagen Talks and Climate Science Survive Stolen E-Mail Controversy now reads as if it were written by David Biello somewhere around 1993. Oh, well, back when this nonsense was written (December?) some people still believed the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear, not to mention the Amazonian rainforests. Nor did we know that not just the East Anglia CRU, but also our own NASA had been playing fast and loose with AGW temperature facts…The poor editors of SA are taking a drubbing in the comments, which they richly deserve.
