Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
You have to give the corporate media whores credit – they take narrative polls conducted by GOP-friendly pollsters (Rasmussen, Survey USA, etc.) and misrepresent the data to support their preconceived media narrative that Republicans are resurgent and a wave of voters are going to vote Republican in November.
Poll after poll consistently shows that while voters are unhappy with Democrats (hint: Democrats are also unhappy with Democrats in Congress; this number does not translate into Republican support), voters like Republicans even less, and they continue to blame George W. Bush and Republican economic policies for the economy – and rightly so.
This is why the media villagers and Beltway bloviators focus on the "generic" numbers. Congress is at an all-time low in public support they say, inferring that it is the Democratic Congress. Well no, actually, the number dragging down the "generic" support for Congress is the woeful Republican number, consistently in the 20-something percentile. Democrats consistently out-perform Republicans in the 30-something percentile.
The "generic" ballot numbers are suspect for the same reason. Even so, the corporate media whores spin these numbers as well. The registered voter generic ballot numbers are practically even between Democrats and Republicans, but that doesn't fit the media's preconceived narrative of a Republican wave so they turn to likely voter modeling (would this also be provided by the same suspect GOP-friendly narrative pollsters?) to argue that Republicans have a double-digit lead in likely voter enthusiasm over Democrats.
Perhaps so, but there are far more Democratic voters than Republicans nationally. If Democrats turn out to vote, the gap disappears.
The point is, the Republicans are not resurgent nor are they suddenly newly popular with voters after nearly destroying the world's economy with the Bush Great Recession, and two unpopular wars that Republicans failed to finish. The Party of No (New Ideas) has not offered voters anything other than a return to "back to Bush," the same failed conservative ideological policies that drove the country into the ditch in the first place.
Republicans are also threatening a return to the 1990's with "defunding" the government to force a government shut-down as Newt Gingrich did in 1995. The party that wants to "drown the government in the bathtub" wants to shut down government, they have no interest in actually governing. It is more of the same Republican obstructionism that is currently angering voters.
What is true is that Democrats are not as enthusiastic about voting in 2010 as they were in 2008. The Democratic base is disappointed that the Obama administration did not go "big and bold" enough for them, they settled for half measures and compromised too much with Republicans.
I would wager that more than 90% of these Democrats have never been inside the grinder to experience the sausage making process of legislation. That's where the idealistic "School House Rock" version of how a bill becomes law runs into the cold hard reality of how a bill actually becomes law. As Sen. Hubert Humphrey once observed, sometimes you have to settle for half a loaf. You don't always get everything you want.
As I have said before, we live in an age of instant gratification: "I want it, and I want it now!" I ought to smack these Democrats upside their heads. Snap out of it!
If you want Democrats to go "big and bold" you have to elect more Democrats. With larger Democratic majorities, the Republicans will be disempowered and their "conservadem" Blue Dog enablers will not have enough members to enable the Republican obstructionists. Moreover, with larger Democratic majorities the "conservadem" Blue Dogs may finally feel empowered to vote with their more progressive Democratic caucus on bold legislative initiatives.
Sitting at home on election day pouting and feeling sorry for yourself to teach Democrats a lesson only serves to let Republicans sneak into office. Democrats will have elected them not by voting for Republicans but by staying home and not voting. The destruction Republicans will inflict upon this country will be your fault.
So get your "unenthusiastic" asses up off the couch and choose a Democratic candidate for whom you will work for the next eight weeks. Contribute what you can afford. And above all else, vote for Democrats up and down the ballot. An unenthusiastic vote counts the same as an enthusiastic one. If you will do this, we can prove to the corporate media whores that, once again, their preconceived media narrative is wrong, just as president Harry Truman did in 1948.
The late-2000s recession (or the Great Recession) is an economic recession that began in the United States in December 2007 as determined by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. It spread to much of the industrialized world, and has caused a pronounced deceleration of economic activity. This global recession has been taking place in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances and was sparked by the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2007–2010.
The financial crisis has been linked to reckless lending practices by financial institutions encouraged by the government and the growing trend of securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. A more broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices.
With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined, many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance.
A global recession has resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession
I think you give George W. Bush too much credit. “nearly destroying the world’s economy…”, really? For arguments sake I’ll grant you the US economy but don’t other countries have their own presidents who can be blamed or credited?