Tag Archives: left

03.21.13
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Politicos Think “It’s a Trap” We say we love FDR but Reagan!!

Elections, polls, studies, show America is an old fashioned FDR lefty country.  But the Beltway Bloviator Class don’t trust it and treat us like we’re really still 1980s Reaganites. Reagan himself revered FDR (or said he did), as opposed to his hard core Bircher and Goldwaterite followers  that adopted Reagan and always detested FDR and the New Deal.  Chameleon-like, Reagan blew with whatever wind would help his election and deification. He loved FDR because the country did. Then in the tumultuous 1960s Reagan took the Nixonian politics of resentment and elevated it to an art form, playing to the alienation of the older, whiter establishment population who were scared shitless by sex, drugs and rock & roll, not to mention the coloreds! In this way we can maybe understand the Beltway reluctance to believe we’re really as liberal as we say. 

1. While they say in polls they’re more liberal, are they really?

The thinking is “aren’t the American people too easy to push, prod, move, especially in populist directions? And so they’re against guns this week and okay with gay marriage. But that’ll fade (the Connecticut effect) and something will rile them up again like a 9/11.”  Clearly the GOP doesn’t buy that America has left them. But neither do many Dems or they’d be a little more full throated about subjects that polls show they should be cleaning up on.

Except for the real progressives, that D.C. pays no attention to (see lack of coverage for CPC budget), Dem leaders and spokesmen are afraid to get out front on real progressive issues.

The D.C. political class wonders to themselves won’t there be another Reagan any moment now who personifies and plays upon people’s fears, driving us back into the heart of darkness? Is it Rand Paul (LOL!)

2. Who actually votes?

The 2010 elections haunt politics, not just for all the RWNJs that got elected and pushed the House in obstructionist GOP hands. They’re not sure what to expect from us. 2008? Or 2010? Will Dems show up in 2014?  Who knows?  If there are enough angry, old, white, Obama hating nut jobs still alive to hold the signs and vote in 2014 they’ll be there.  

Who’s more angry? Who’s more motivated? I keep hearing this in the gun debate too. “Sure people say they want gun control, but the gun nuts live and breathe this, can’t take a chance.” So senators from red states needed Reid to put the kibosh on an assault weapons ban. And guess what, if the GOP stands as one against the 92% approved universal background checks bill, and refuse those Dem senators cover, they may well vote against that too.

 

03.21.13
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GOP Ignoring Election and Polls – Part Infinity

Last week I mentioned that the GOP (hell, everybody!) considered the 2012 election a referendum, but then just ignored the results. Polls continue to show the people support ideas coming from the Democrats and the White House, not the GOP, but the party leaders and  politicos are continuing their Borg-like pursuit of whatever the hell they want to.

Gun control?  Majorities of the population, even NRA members! approve of an assault weapons ban, limitations on clip capacity, trafficking controls and universal background checks (92%!). We’ll be lucky if we get the background checks through a recalcitrant GOP-led Congress.

Social Issues? The country is running away from the religious right stance against choice and equality. Not the GOP, they run at it. But it’s not noble like firemen running towards danger when we all run away, no. This is a lack of ability to change or evolve unless of course their son comes out to them and then they will agonize about it and (maybe) slough off a thousand years of prejudice for what should have always been in a democracy that was founded on “all men are created equal.”

Economy? 

A total of 77 percent of respondents said they’d support infrastructure projects to put Americans to work and 75 percent would support a “federal job creation law” that would do the same for a million people.

Anticipating criticism of the poll, Gallup asked the same question again, pointing out that each initiative would “spend government money.” With that addition, support fell slightly, to 72 percent.

Over and over and over again, people are way smarter than the Beltway Bloviator Class and their GOP opinion leaders that constantly keep leading us rightward, while logic, science, reality and the people go leftward. You know what, screw that, it’s not “leftward”.  It’s not “left” or “right” it’s what works versus what does not friggin’ work at all. It’s what’s proven, been there, done that got screwed versus what worked before and would work again if the people in power would allow it to happen.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-even-republicans-support-government-spending-to-create-jobs/

It’s so tiresome to have the people constantly show in polls and elections that they think one thing and their leaders believe that they’re just joking they really don’t think that. I hear it in the gun debate. Despite polls, it’s just smart politics to kill an assault weapons ban because the 4,000,000 members of the NRA will overwhelm the other 306 million of us and hand the Senate to the GOP.

From Digby:

It turns out that roughly the same number of Americans describe themselves as conservatives as they did in the 1970s, while the number of politicians describing themselves that way has skyrocketed. And yet Democrats, even as they win elections and hold massive amounts of power in the government are still on the run, following these GOP politicians as they race ever further to the right.

From Sal Gentile of the UP Blog:

There are a number of possible explanations for this disconnect. For one, politicians are much more beholden to the donor class that funds their campaigns than they are to their actual constituents, and as political scientists have found, the priorities of the wealthy are vastly different from the priorities of the public at large. Another possible explanation is that voters are generally bad at expressing policy preferences in the abstract. They’re much more accurate — and, generally, more liberal — about their own views when answering specific questions about discrete policies, like whether we should raise taxes on the wealthy.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/09/study-politicians-think-voters-are-way-more-conservative-than-they-actually-are/