The political utility of smartphone “apps” has thus far been largely unimpressive, at least from a progressive point of view. But here’s one, “Learn how the Affordable Care Act Benefits You,” which could do some good.
The RNC has a new attack ad out, faulting the President for rising health care costs. Should be a tough sell, if the Obama campaign does a good job of explaining when the ACA’s cost-cutting provisions kick in.
In the 1970s, the so-called “Swedish welfare state” arguably achieved the most humane government in world history, with near-full employment, comprehensive health care, free education and a broad range standard-setting social benefits. The ‘Solidarity Principle” was part of the social contract, insuring that the lowest-paid workers would get the largest pay increases. There was some erosion in benefits over the next decades. But in 2006, Swedish voters made the mistake of electing a ‘center-right” government that slashed taxes and gutted benefits, leading to an alarming rise in poverty, increasing protests about accelerated income inequality and a 25% uptick in “acute” homelessness since 2005 — a cautionary tale for the U.S.
Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger if you would prefer that politicians pipe down about religion already. M.J. Lee reports at Politico on a new Pew Research poll which indicates that “Almost four in ten Americans say there is “too much” talk of religion and prayer by politicians – an all-time high since the question was first asked more than 10 years ago, according to a new poll.”
Lest your concern for the heart-breaking woes of Wall St. bankers was flagging, Jim Hightower has a tongue-in-cheek tear-jerker at Nation of Change about the great sacrifices they have been forced to make, including: “A hedge-fund manager, for example, says he’ll now have to strain to pay his $7,500 annual dues to remain a member of the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester. Plus, he worries about food, health care and boarding. Not for him and his family, but for his two dogs — he’s been laying out $17,000 a year for upkeep of his labradoodle and bichon frise, including around $5,000 to hire a dog-walker to take them out each day. He might resort to walking them himself a couple times a week.”
At The Nation, Chris Lehmann traces the origins of the war against unions and its devastating consequences for America back to the Gipper. “The true economic legacy of the Reagan years is an uglier practice: unionbusting.”
There’s no denying the central role of racism in the slaying of Trayvon Martin. but it looks to me like the National Rifle Association’s hard lobbying for the so-called “Stand Your ground” laws (aka “shoot first” laws) is partly to blame. As Mother Jones notes: “…In 2010, the Tampa Bay Times reported that “justifiable homicides”–i.e., killings that were deemed legitimate–have skyrocketed in Florida over several years since the “stand your ground” law went into effect.” See also John Nichols’ post in The Nation, “How ALEC Took Florida’s ‘License to Kill’ Law National.”
Sean Sullivan reports at National Journal’s Hotline on “DCCC Adds Five Illinois Races to “Red to Blue” List.” Sullivan quotes DCCC Chair Steve israel: “I am conservative in telling you we will pick up two seats in Illinois, I am comfortable in telling we will pick up three to four seats in seats in Illinois, I think in a wave election in an aggressive climate we could pick up five seats.”
I didn’t think the “etch-a-sketch” comment was all that big a deal. But Joe Klein makes a potent case that it is. Newt’s comment backs up Klein’s argument, “Gov. Romney’s staff, they don’t even have the decency to wait until they get the nomination to explain to us how they’ll sell us out,” he said. “I think having an Etch A Sketch as your campaign model raises every doubt about where we’re going.” Looks like the GOP front-runner has got himself a new nickname.
Ezra Klein flags a time when Gov. Etch-a-Sketch spoke more kindly about rising gas prices, saying “I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline…I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.” Hopefully, someone will find the video clip.
Month: March 2012
This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
There are three ways to look at the GOP nominating contest now that Mitt Romney has won Illinois. The first is summarized by Alex Massie in a headline earlier today: “Illinois Votes; Mitt Romney Wins; Race Still Over.” A second is to insist that, while Romney is on track to win the nomination, it’s unwise to assume anything until he has mathematically won a majority of delegates. I’d adopt the third approach, which is to look at the road ahead and assess whether there is a plausible–not just possible, but plausible–way for Romney to lose the nomination.
And looking at the calendar and the resources available to Romney and Santorum, it’s just irrational to deny Romney’s got this wrapped up. It comes down to the delegate math: Despite his various missteps, Romney has been steadily winning a majority of the delegates awarded. According to CNN’s reasonable count, Romney went into Illinois with 521 delegates, out of the 966 awarded. Romney needs 1,144 delegates–an absolute majority of those who will vote at the Convention in late August–to decisively clinch the nomination.
And the upcoming contests don’t give Santorum a chance to catch up, or to prevent Romney from reaching the magic number. Last week, the wizards at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball looked at the contests pending through the end of April: Their “guesstimate” of the most likely delegate split in this series was Romney 268, Santorum 117–and this was conceding Louisiana and Pennsylvania wins to Santorum. Looking at the other states–D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New York, and Rhode Island)–it’s hard to think of a scenario where Santorum could win significantly more than the lopsided minority Sabato suggests. Taking that into account, April could put Romney so close to the magic number of 1,144 delegates that the rest of the race would be a formality.
Sure, if Santorum somehow survives the April primaries, May looks like an oasis, with primaries in the theoretically Santo-friendly states of North Carolina, West Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Kentucky (along with less-friendly Oregon), leading up to May 29 in Texas. But all these states award delegates proportionately, which means that even a near-sweep by Santorum would do little more than reduce Romney’s lead. They wouldn’t come close to allowing Santorum to catch up.
June is dramatically less friendly to Santorum, with New Jersey and Utah–two states that Romney has in the bag, and which will award a total of 90 delegates on a statewide winner-take-all basis–along with California, where 172 delegates are up for grabs in a winner-take-all-by-congressional-district system that will likely give Mitt another plurality of close to 100 delegates.
When you add it up, as Nate Silver did earlier this month, even the best-case scenario for Rick Santorum would leave him trailing Romney by 300 delegates; Mitt would be on the brink of an absolute majority, and unpledged delegates would then be able to push him over the top.
And all these calculations assume Santorum keeps winning the kind of voters he’s won up until now at the same levels–an extremely generous assumption, given the usual tendency of voters tired of the contest to consolidate behind the front-runner. They also assume that Santorum won’t stumble in the March and April states of Louisiana and Pennsylvania; a loss in the latter, his home state, could formally end the contest very fast.
Facing this inevitable outcome, Santorum could swing for the fences with an abrasive negative campaign that galvanizes conservative misgivings about Romney. Heading into Illinois, there were already signs he was willing to do that, accusing Romney of “destroying manufacturing” as governor of Massachusetts, and of “having no core” personally. Most ominously, Santorum’s campaign may have decided to revive Newt Gingrich’s earlier attacks on Romney’s record at Bain Capital. But just as conservative opinion-leaders combined to help Romney crush Gingrich in Florida after Newt dared to use Democratic talking-points, they’d almost certainly abandon Santorum if he went there. And more important, the math still wouldn’t be on Santorum’s side.
Of course, conservative Romney-haters won’t give up fantasies of some convention revolt against Romney, or of a misstep terrible enough to make voters and party insiders stampede away from him. But now, after Illinois, it’s extremely difficult to doubt that–to quote the old country song–it’s all over but the crying.
by Jeremy Rosner, Kristi Lowe, and Amanda Oefelein of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Matt Bennett, Mieke Eoyang, and Michelle Diggles of Third Way, Third Way and National Security Academy
March 21, 2012
Executive Summary
November’s presidential election will feature something not seen in American politics in more than forty years: a Democratic candidate who enjoys some of his strongest ratings on national security. Swing voters in a new set of focus group are generally impressed with the job President Obama is doing in keeping the country safe. Yet his success has not erased old doubts or stereotypes about his party on these issues.
Obama’s strong image comes in large part from the success of the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden, along with a string of other security-related accomplishments. The Democratic Party, by contrast, continues to carry image liabilities on national security that stretch back a half century. But while there is a gap between Obama and his party on national security, there is a mirror gap for Republicans. The record of President George W. Bush has dented their strong brand on national security and leaves real doubts about what Republicans would do if they once again controlled the White House.
Key Findings
A new Third Way-Greenberg Quinlan Rosner report outlines key findings encouraging Democrats to welcome the debate on national security and highlighting ways Democrats can use Obama’s success to improve the party’s brand and make real gains during this election year.
Methodology
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, in conjunction with Third Way, conducted four focus groups: two in Cincinnati, OH on January 26; and two in Tampa, FL on February 2. The groups were composed of moderate/conservative Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans. This research is inherently qualitative in nature, and so these results are suggestive rather than definitive; yet general consistency in responses across the four groups gives us confidence in the findings presented here.
Dems have been faulted by conservative journalists for excessive political hyperbole in using the term “war on” in connection with GOP campaigns against unions, young voters, people of color, undocumented workers and women. Call it what you will, there shouldn’t be much doubt that Republicans are dedicated to undermining the political and citizenship rights of these groups.
Not content to wage a war on voting against pro-Democratic groups, it now appears that Republicans have declared a war on free speech as well. We had a staff post yesterday on the draconian anti-picketing bill now making it’s way through the Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia. Today DemocraticDiva Donna Gatehouse has an equally-disturbing blog, “AZ Legislature Attacks Civil Liberties” up at AFL-CIO Now. As Gatehouse explains:
…Women’s and reproductive rights groups will undoubtedly be at the state capitol to speak out against numerous shocking and intrusive anti-abortion and anti-contraception measures before the legislature this session. The GOP majority is apparently so frightened by this prospect it’s trying to make it a Class 1 misdemeanor to engage in “passive resistance.” Common nonviolent protest tactics such as going limp when the police try to remove you from an area or chaining yourself to something could get you up to a six-month month jail sentence.
The deadline to introduce new bills has passed but Arizona has a maneuver, called a “striker,” that permits legislators to introduce bills beyond it. They strike out all the language in a previous bill and replace it with a new, and often totally unrelated, bill. It’s supposed to be reserved for real emergencies but it’s used for all kinds of bills, and usually to railroad them through the process with little time for public comment or debate. In this case, the “emergency” is lawmakers facing the unbearable thought of citizens calling attention to their outrageous and undemocratic agenda in the public square.
Phoenix blogger Steve Muratore reports that the “no passive resistance” bill is the idea of Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Scottsdale), who has a long background in law enforcement.
…Apparently, he testified that law enforcement officers are at risk of harm from Occupy protesters who passively resist…What harm? A hernia? Not if they lift with their knees as they’re supposed to.
Given the chance, today’s GOP would make criminals out of American heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, who tapped the power of nonviolent protest to strengthen America’s rights of free expression, freedom of assembly and free speech. During Dr. King’s lifetime, there were some Republican leaders of patriotic integrity who stepped up and took a stand in support of the first Amendment rights of protest and free speech. It appears that none who can meet that standard remain in today’s GOP.
As of this moment, it looks like the media is going to give Rick Santorum a free pass on his denial that he agrees with the Rev. Dennis Terry – the man who introduced him at a church service with the most over-the-top assertion of Christian theocracy in decades.
Here’s what Terry said in his introduction:
America “was founded as a Christian nation” and remains a country where “there is only one God and his name is Jesus…If you don’t love America you don’t like the way we do things, I’ve got one thing to say, GET OUT! We don’t worship Buddha. We don’t worship Mohammed. We don’t worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”
Now here’s how Santorum distinguished his own view:
“If the question is do I agree with his statement…obviously I believe in freedom of religion and all religions are welcome. I think I’ve made that pretty clear throughout my campaign that I believe very much in the freedom of religion and folks should be able to worship whoever they want to worship and bring their thoughts in the public square.”
As of this writing, it appears that the media is pretty much accepting this response at face value and is basically wandering away muttering “Oh well, I guess that’s O.K.”
But for anyone who has read the other major addresses Santorum has delivered about religion, his ambiguous sound bite about all religions being “welcome”, and free to “bring their thoughts to the public square” is a tip-off that he’s actually dodging the expression of his actual opinions on religion rather than honestly asserting them.
Several weeks ago The Democratic Strategist published a substantial analysis of Thomas Jefferson’s religious philosophy that began with a summary of Santorum’s religious views. The following excerpt from that analysis reveals the major elements of Santorum’s religious philosophy.
———————————————————-
Rick Santorum’s Religious Views
In recent weeks Rick Santorum has suddenly brought into the mainstream national political debate a series of core ideas of the religious right that had previously been confined to the conservative community. Santorum shocked many commentators with the statements that he believed that the Christian faithful were literally in a “spiritual war” with secular society, that John Kennedy’s 1960 speech supporting the constitutional separation of church and state made Santorum “want to throw up” and that not only Barack Obama but most mainstream Christian denominations had actually ceased to be genuinely Christian.
Behind the controversial quotes that appeared in the media in late February, there are two major speeches that Santorum delivered, one at the Ave Maria University in Florida and the other at the University of St Thomas in Houston Texas. These two speeches provide a more robust and nuanced view of his theological views and taken together with his public statements on the campaign trail make it possible to summarize Santorum’s basic theological ideas with a series of direct quotations:
This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As Mitt Romney struggles, yet again, to nail down the Republican presidential nomination, a question keeps presenting itself: Is Romney’s team incompetent? The question was asked very directly by The Atlantic‘s Molly Ball last week, and the bulk of GOP operatives she consulted were extremely critical of Romney’s brain trust, throwing around words like “clumsy,” “oblivious,” and the damning-with-faint-praise “technically proficient.” A lot of the criticism of Romney, in Ball’s account and elsewhere, involves his chronic inability to rally “movement conservative” leaders into his camp, which might have denied a whole series of opponents the oxygen they needed. But is Romney’s campaign really to blame for this situation? I would argue that it is not.
To understand why, consider just how much the climate in the GOP shifted between 2008 and 2012. It’s easy to forget that the “movement candidate” in 2008 was none other than Mitt Romney himself. He was endorsed by the editors of National Review; by Senator Jim DeMint; by Bill Bennett; by the late Paul Weyrich; and by Glenn Beck and Herman Cain. Romney was even endorsed by Rick Santorum, as has been frequently noted this year. Aside from outright endorsements, Romney also benefitted from the tactical support of Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth, and The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page–particularly in his struggle to marginalize Mike Huckabee, the evangelical Christian candidate with an unorthodox economic message.
This wasn’t because Romney espoused more conservative positions back then, or because his heresies were less known. All the aspects of Romney’s background that have supposedly made it so difficult for hardcore conservatives to accept him in this cycle–the flip-flopping on cultural issues, the country-club persona, the moderate record in Massachusetts–were entirely apparent in 2008. No, the reason Romney fell out of favor with many movement conservatives is simply that they have become a lot more right-wing–and a lot more demanding–over the past four years.
For the most part, Romney didn’t do a bad job of keeping up with the rightward lurch in his party. He embraced the Cut, Cap, and Balance budget plan, a more thoroughgoing commitment to high-end tax cuts and entitlement reform, an aggressively saber-rattling foreign policy, and, of course, the wrathful language toward Democrats that now makes John McCain’s occasional gestures toward bipartisanship and civility seem very quaint. But some of the shifts in the conservative landscape over the last four years would have been impossible for Romney to adjust to no matter how clever or smart he and his strategists were. Who would have guessed that Romney’s white-shoe corporate background would become something of a liability? Just four years ago, Mike Huckabee drew the concerted wrath of conservatives for suggesting that the laissez-faire economic policies of the Bush administration were producing less than ideal results from the perspective of middle-class Americans. Now, with conservatives suddenly suspicious of Wall Street, it’s Romney who is suffering for his image as a predatory capitalist, most notably at the hands of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. What could he have possibly done about that, particularly since his business background was the heart of the otherwise empty claim that he was the candidate best equipped to heal a stricken economy?
The periodic threat to Romney’s nomination posed by Gingrich probably best exemplifies the radically different 2012 environment. Many of Mitt’s critics look at the field he has faced and think his struggles to overcome it are a sign of his weakness. As Jonathan Martin brutally put it in Politico last week:
[T]he establishment favorite needs to explain why, two-and-a-half months into the primary season, he can’t seem to put away underfunded rivals who are viewed by many in the party as general election disasters.
But turn that around: What does it say about the climate of opinion in the GOP this year that has-beens like Gingrich and Santorum, nobodies like Cain, and extremist figures like Bachmann and Paul have been able to mount serious challenges for the nomination? The one non-Romney candidate who would not have been laughed off the stage in 2008, Tim Pawlenty, was the first to be discarded. And 2000’s movement-conservative candidate, George W. Bush, is now routinely denounced as a betrayer of conservative principles, whose primary domestic policy initiatives have become anathema. The fact that Romney has managed to inch toward the nomination at a time when the dominant mood in the GOP is so partial to right-wing populism and extremism is arguably quite an achievement.
Sure, Team Mitt has made strategic mistakes, most notably the negligence that enabled Rick Santorum to re-emerge as a serious candidate after Romney’s decisive wins in Florida and Nevada. But there really isn’t much of a blueprint for a candidate in Romney’s position–unless you go all the way back to 1964, when a similar radicalization of the GOP occurred and conventional Republicans were similarly thrown off-balance. And if Mitt Romney wins the nomination in a year when his party seems to long for another Barry Goldwater, the last thing his campaign should be accused of is incompetence.
Mike Hall and Jennifer Kauffman have a post up at the AFL-CIO Now blog, “Tea Party Joins Fight Against Georgia Anti-Picketing Bill,” indicating that the GA GOP leaders may have brilliantly alienated their most favored constituency. As Kauffman and Hall explain:
Here’s something we don’t see every day. The tea party and unions and other progressive groups have come together in Georgia to fight a proposed Draconian law that would make union and other picketing a serious crime.
The bill, SB 469 introduced by state Sen. Don Balfour (R), clamps down on free speech and workers’ rights.The bill would allow protestors to be charged twice for the same act of peaceful protest–once with conspiracy to commit, which would be charged as a high and aggravated misdemeanor and carry a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail, and then with criminal trespass, which would carry a $1,000 fine and also up to a year in jail.
The bill would cover action by unions, environmental, civil rights, pro-and anti-choice groups and just about every conceivable group that would engage in picketing protests.
The bill, SB 469, which has passed the GA state senate, was the target of a Saturday “We Are Georgia” rally at the state capitol, which drew over 2,000 protesters. As the Atlanta Tea Party/Tea Party Patriots Georgia put it, in urging their members to turn out and support unions and other progressive protesters on this one, “This is not a right or left issue, it is a right or wrong issue. We may not agree with all of the politics…but we will defend their right to speak and protest, because this is America. If we destroy the First Amendment, we cease to be a free nation.”
Having already ticked off farmers and Latinos with their immigrant-harrassment legislation, Georgia’s Republican leaders are now exploring new and creative ways to anger their base.
The following article, by Mike Lux, Co-founder and CEO, Progressive Strategies, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
Throughout American history, some of our greatest political thinkers have understood that at the end of the day, democracy works better than elites running things because regular people instinctively get the truth of what is going on in the real world — on Main Street — more than out-of-touch elites. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine got this; so did Abe Lincoln, who believed in a government of, by, and for the people; so did the reformers and organizers of the 20th Century like Saul Alinsky and Walter Reuther. They all knew that the people might get things wrong some of the time, but that ultimately it was better to trust and empower regular folks because the elites generally messed up a lot more of the time than democracy did.
When I read the great memos and reams of data that Stan Greenberg and James Carville at Democracy Corps put out, and read focus group and polling reports from other pollsters I respect, I am reminded of that truth once again. It is striking how much better regular folks understand than most of the elites in this country what is really going on with this economy. They aren’t following the moment to moment blips in the job or GDP numbers so much as they know deep in their guts that the American middle class is in real danger, that it is on a long downhill decline, and that there need to be big fundamental changes. This has big implications for the 2012 election.
The swing voters swing because they go back and forth on whom to blame more — Wall Street and big business or the government — and what then to do about it. They think both sides of that equation are bad: that Wall Street screwed up the economy, and that government can’t succeed because it is bought off by Wall Street and other wealthy special interests. They think both political parties are bad. And they for the most part aren’t feeling like the economy is getting much better or that, as President Obama put it in his State of the Union, “America is back!” They are pessimists (at least in the short term), populists, alienated from the establishment. That is why I continue to fear a more upbeat message on how the economy really is getting better from the Obama team will cause him to lose. Stan and James reminded me recently of the last ad we ran in the 1992 Clinton campaign, the single most effective ad we ran that fall. I wish I could find the video for you, but I haven’t been able to. It was a 15-second ad that had a clip of George Bush talking about how the economy really was getting better and jobs were starting to pick up again (both of which were technically true), and then the screen just cut to lettering and a voice saying “How ya doing?” People responded strongly to it, feeling in their gut that the economy the last four years had not been getting better, and that Bush was out of touch for saying so. It turned a race that had been tightening into an easy six-point win.
My concern isn’t just, as I have written about before, that the Obama team doesn’t brag too much about economic improvements that most voters aren’t feeling yet. My bigger worry is that Obama, other Democrats, and the broad progressive movement will just miss the moment we are in: middle-class voters have a deep understanding that something is profoundly wrong with the direction our economy has been heading for the last 30 years. They understand, far better than most elites, the underlying trends that are grinding middle-class families into the dirt, and are making it harder and harder for poor people and young people to climb the ladder into the middle class. They are cynical about politicians bragging about job growth because they know that most new jobs don’t pay what the ones that were lost used to, or are temp jobs that will be gone all too fast. They know that wage growth is flat, housing prices are down, and the costs of necessities — gas, groceries, health care — keep going up. They worry about being able to retire with enough money to live on, about taking care of their elderly parents and grandparents, and about sending their kids to college with tuition rates skyrocketing.
The House GOP leadership’s budget proposals are not only DOA, but highly unpopular with the public, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot.’ As Teixeira explains:
…The new Ryan budget will look very much like last year’s that called for ending Medicare as we know it, cutting a wide variety of social programs from Medicaid to education, and preserving tax cuts for the affluent. The other is that the public won’t like it because of these very similarities.
Take the Medicare provision first. The Kaiser Foundation recently asked the public whether “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government guaranteeing seniors health insurance and making sure that everyone gets the same defined set of benefits” or “Medicare should be changed to a system in which the government would guarantee each senior a fixed amount of money to put toward health insurance. Seniors would purchase that coverage either from traditional Medicare or from a list of private health plans.” By an overwhelming 70-25 margin the public chose the former option, which is traditional Medicare, over the Ryan plan’s premium support model.
Nor are Ryan’s Medicaid proposals expected to get much traction from public opinion, says Teixeira:
The new Ryan budget will also likely call for ending Medicaid as we know it, where the federal government guarantees coverage and sets minimum standards for benefits and eligibility, and replacing it with a system where the federal government gives states a fixed amount of money and each state decides who to cover and what services to pay for. Last year, when this was first proposed, Kaiser asked people about the Ryan budget approach and received a 60-35 negative verdict.,
Not much support for gutting Social Security to avoid cutting military spending, either:
Rep. Ryan claims, of course, that these changes are necessary to reduce the budget deficit and avoid any decrease in military spending or, especially, any rise in tax rates for the wealthy. But he gets our priorities exactly backwards as far as the public is concerned. In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, the public overwhelmingly favored cutting military spending (52 percent) over cutting Social Security (13 percent) or Medicare (15 percent).
Ryan and GOP leaders adamantly oppose tax hikes on the wealthy. But the public sees things a little differently, explains Teixeira:
And when it comes to taxing the rich, the public says bring it on! In the same poll, by a lopsided 67-29 margin the public thought taxes on households earning $1 million or more a year should be increased to help deal with the budget deficit.
It appears that Rep. Ryan has delivered another fatally-flawed budget, doomed again by his characteristic ideological excess. As Teixeira concludes, “The new Ryan budget: dead on arrival in the court of public opinion.”
In his WaPo post “Hey, reporters! Watch out for polling outliers,” Jonathan Bernstein sounds a cautionary note, which should resonate with political writers across the spectrum. As Bernstein explains:
…A couple of high-profile polls last week showed drops in Obama’s approval rating, including a New York Times/CBS survey that had him dropping to 41 percent approval. Yet several other polls showed Obama staying in the same general range as before, or even gaining; overall, it was clear that the NYT/CBS poll was an outlier.
Bernstein goes on to recount how a panel on “This Week” used the poll to launch into a discussion about President Obama tanking in the low forties, “ignoring that other polls last week had him at 46, 47, 47, 48, 50 and 50 percent approval.” Bernstein responds:
This is really sloppy work. It’s one thing to have overreacted to the Times poll when it was released on Monday — that’s bad enough — but there’s no excuse for missing all the other polls by the end of the week…Hey, reporters and pundits! Always, always, use the excellent polling averages provided by Pollster (currently 47.7 percent approval) and/or Real Clear Politics (currently 47.5 percent). Both of them have convenient charts showing current trends, and lists of recent polls so that one can see at a glance how a particular survey fits in with the overall pattern…We’re going to be hit with a gazillion general-election polls in the coming months, which means that about one-twentieth of that gazillion is going to be an outlier even if everyone is doing their best work…
End of Political Journalism 101 refresher course. As Bernstein concludes, “Be prepared for those outliers, and be ready to discount them rapidly. Anything else is just bad reporting.”
