by Pamela Powers Hannley Congressional candidate Andrei Cherny–Mr. No Labels, the guy who was installed as chair of the Arizona Democratic Party by bending the rules, and then quit the post to run for Congress– has found himself entangled in a Mitt Romney moment. OK, we’ve seen this many times. Anyone who has been … Read more
By Pamela Powers Hannley When long-time Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl announced his impending retirement in February 2011, the chances of a Democrat filling that seat seemed so remote that most news stories—including this one from Politico—only mentioned the Republican heir-apparent, six-term Congressman Jeff Flake. Sixteen months later, Democratic challenger and former Surgeon General Dr. … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Greg Sargent has an important post about the failure of the corporate media to inform the public in the healthcare debate, which allowed the corporate forces aligned against the Affordable Care Act (the New York Times tallies it up: $235 million has been spent on ads attacking "Obamacare" since March 2010, versus only $69 million on ads favoring it), to create a narrative that was oft repeated in the media echo chamber.
This in turn created the milieu in which fringe right-wing ideas get mainstreamed, e.g., "death panels," and a conservative activist Justice like Antonin Scalia feels emboldened to legislate his radical political ideology from the bench by rejecting well-established court precedent, even his own opinion. Scalia Changes His Mind on Key Obamacare Precedent.
Greg Sargent writes GOP wims message war over health care:
A number of people are pointing to this big Pew poll today to argue that it shows that Republicans won the message war over health care reform. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is true. But one of the reasons Pew cites for this victory seems particularly interesting:
An analysis by PEJ of the language used in the media (PEJ research) reveals that opponents of the reform won the so-called “messaging war” in the coverage. Terms that were closely associated with opposition arguments, such as “government run,” were far more present in media reports than terms associated with arguments supporting the bill, such as “pre-existing conditions.”
To conduct the analysis, researchers examined and identified three of the most common concepts being pushed by opponents of the bill and the three concepts being promoted by supporters and then examined the news coverage for the presence of those concepts and language. The concepts used by opponents were nearly twice as common as those used by supporters.
Pew finds that the press coverage was also more more preoccupied with the political strategies employed by both sides than it was with the policy specifics of the law itself.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: One of the things that polling tells us is that folks "hate" the Affordable Care Act, because it has been demonized in the media and serves as a substitute for President Obama himself ("ObamaCare"), but when you ask them about specific provisions of the Affordable Care Act, these same folks want and … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Arizona consumers and businesses can expect to collect more than $36 million in refunds this summer from health-insurance companies under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, according to two reports. Health-insurance refunds on the way for Arizonans: The reports show consumers who have purchased individual health-insurance plans will get $24.4 million in … Read more