Discussion for article #236578
Reminds me of the mother of one of my college roommates. As late as 1979, she still couldn’t understand how Johnson had won the Presidency in 1964. “But everyone in our neighborhood had Goldwater signs in the yard.”
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TPM:
Their conclusion: “legislators usually believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are.”
It might be illuminating to see a similar study restricted to primary voters.
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One problem, though, is that voters think they’re more conservative than they are too, because Republicans have successfully branded the word “liberal” to mean “everything that’s bad with the world,” so they like the guy who says he’s conservative. What Dems really need to do is re-brand liberal by saying, “If you think it’s wrong that the average CEO makes more than 300 times the average worker and pays a lower percentage in taxes while families working 40 hours a week have to scrape by on food stamps and the federal deficit increases, you might be a liberal.” Etc.
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“politicians feel much more accountable to the wealthy, party leaders, or interest groups than to rank and file voters’ preferences,” and that “politically active citizens tend to be wealthier and more conservative than others.”
It’s pretty simple IMO. We live in a Plutocracy.
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Prior to when Faux News began waterboarding pols in 1996–
the results were probably much nearer reality.
jw1
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Yes, more of the “Fox effect,” a term that will become part of our language of political analysis.
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Who contacts their legislators? Older people, and people who are upset about change. Conservatives tend to be older and less willing to want change.
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The media’s practice is to marginalize most Americans. One way they do it is by referring to the majority positions as “liberal”, “Progressive” or “the Left”.
- The vast majority of Americans opposed cuts to Social Security; the majorities extend to both Parties and to Independents. In his 2013 budget, Obama proposed cuts to Social Security and the Republicans support cutting Social Security. Watch for these cuts to be proposed again in the coming months. They will be hailed as ‘bi-partisan’. The majorities of human beings in both parties and a majority of independents oppose them; the media called and still calls these people “Progressives”, “Liberals”, “the Left”.
- 64% of voters did not support the bailouts. Obama supported (advocated) paying bonuses to CEO’s of failed Wall Street corporations (using tax payer money) and then elevated the bailout artist in chief to be the Secretary of the US Treasury. Those who wanted to bailout bankrupt Wall Street financial corporations were hailed as “saving our financial system”; the majority, which opposed the bailouts, were defamed. The media called these people “Progressives”, “Liberals”, “the Left”.
- 72% of voters supported “a government administered insurance plan - something like Medicare for those under 65, that would compete for customers with private insurers." (NYTimes/CBS poll spring 2009). Neither the establishment Democrats nor establishment Republicans support the solution of the majority of the people’s; they were ignored; those who tried to testify to the committee were arrested. The media called these people “Progressives”, “Liberals”, “the Left”.
- 68% of voters opposed expanding the Afghan War. Obama planned his own ‘surge’ and then wasted 2,000 American lives and untold thousands of Afghan civilian lives and (newest estimate) over $1,000,0000,000,000 (Trillion). Those who wanted more war were regarded as “heroes” and “patriots”; those who opposed it were vilified as “un-American”, i.e. the majority of Americans were “un-American”. The media called these people “Progressives”, “Liberals”, “the Left”.
The media marginalizes most Americans by referring to their positions as “liberal”, “progressive” and “the left”.
It will be interesting to see how the media tries to marginalize the positions held by most of us throughout an honest debate about positions and policy.
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Politicians mostly care about what their paymasters (major contributors & lobbyists) tell them anyway, so this study is no real surprise.
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Liberals also think their constituents’ views are more conservative than they really are, but are typically only off by about five percentage points.
Liberal legislators are more in-tune with reality than conservatives? Shocking, I know…
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Whoever shouts the loudest…
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The research finds “no meaningful statistical relationship” between incumbency or professionalism and the accuracy of lawmakers’ perceptions.
It’s mordantly funny, as someone online used to say frequently, that with all the efforts to manipulate the public it ends up being the alleged leaders who are mind controlled by binLaden’s Illuminati.
The Reichwing Rage Machine, FOX Noise’s Freakshows and the assorted screeching banshee pundits and squeaking vermin of the Wingnuttery get the grease…and the attention! Sensible, fact-based and truthful discussion will always take a backseat to a damned circus as far as the media is concerned.
It’s as old a truism as the journalistic aphorism “Dog bites man: not news. Man bites dog: news.”
http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/ArtSpaces/Contemp/ACT-D-art/jpegged%20scans/ani-mouse.gif
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The media assumes the country is further to the right than it is as well and panders accordingly.
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Exactly this. I know people who vote Republican for this reason. Their politics are more or less middle of the road, or they embrace the soft libertarianism that allows for cultural liberalism and economic conservatism. They are often critical of the far right, but they have bought into the idea that government is primarily incompetent, wasteful, intrusive and encourages dependency, and they see the Democratic party as the party of government. These aren’t Fox News viewers, but they have inculcated the negative view of government that Fox, talk radio and the Republican party have pushed for decades. They frequently aren’t all that political either, and don’t realize the degree to which the Republican Party has moved to the right. They see their vote as keeping the left in check, not as supporting the extremism of the right.
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It’s also conservatives who reliably turn out to stage media-friendly protests at what what their government is doing, by that I mean the astroturf displays of outrage at social safety net issues which they themselves benefit from of course.
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“Lawmakers Assume Voters Are More Conservative Than They Are”
This is the mistake Republicans made when they tried to enact their agenda after getting the Senate.
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It’s sounds almost un-American to refer to those of who identify with these labels almost as groups apart from the rest, but that’s the point, isn’t it? We’re “The Other” in lock step with the Executive who’s the number one Other
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I got into it with a guy in '96 when he scornfully said “Look at what you’ve got. President Clinton.”
I fired back. “That’s right. But look what YOUVE got. Bob Dole.”
I rest my case.
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