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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / This Should Be Fun

This Should Be Fun

by John Cole|  April 4, 20087:34 am| 57 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics

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It will be entertaining watching right-wing bloggers defend this:

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

I am gonna suggest one of two possible defenses. First, they can do the old tried and true Hugh Hewitt mainstay that “statistics have a left-wing bias.” That is always a crowd pleaser.

If that doesn’t work, then I suggest a switch to “yes, people are really upset at the work of the Democratic led Congress.” That would tie into the laughably absurd claims made earlier at Red State to label the current economic downturn as the “Pelosi recession.”

Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

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57Comments

  1. 1.

    Bedlam

    April 4, 2008 at 7:41 am

    ‘…Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?’

    Now, I would love to chat to one of those 19%. Just to see how they think its all ok?!

  2. 2.

    Front Range Bob

    April 4, 2008 at 7:42 am

    “statistics have a left-wing bias.”

    Not defending Hewitt, but while statistics don’t have a bias, the style and timing of questions used in polling can and often do.

    Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    Ha, most of these 19% would be creaming their jeans if that happened.

  3. 3.

    BH Buck

    April 4, 2008 at 7:46 am

    Oh please, John! You know very well Bush could slaughter a three-year-old on stage in front of that pesky 19%… and they’d cheer him on.

  4. 4.

    Seitz

    April 4, 2008 at 7:46 am

    C’mon, John, you’re better than that. You missed the most obvious response.

    New York Times/CBS News poll

    New York Times AND CBS? While, I’ll bet they could produce a poll that shows 70% support for Osama bin Laden!!

    That will be the wingnut response.

  5. 5.

    joe

    April 4, 2008 at 7:46 am

    So let me get this straight: more than twice as many people think we are seriously in trouble than when it was widely assumed that terrorist attacks on our soil were going to become a semi-regular occurance. Nice.

    I can only assume that that 19% represents the serious, hard-core anti-American fringe.

    “Yes! Finally, Amerikkka is getting what’s coming to her! Oh, absolutely, I believe the country is headed in the right direction – to Hell!”

  6. 6.

    4tehlulz

    April 4, 2008 at 7:47 am

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    Something affecting them personally. The sociopaths always are the last to notice things going wrong–after all, they got theres.

  7. 7.

    javaphil

    April 4, 2008 at 7:47 am

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    That 19% would consider all of those signs of the second coming. They are actively cheering on the complete destruction of the world. Now kittens shitting rainbows, that would cause them to worry.

  8. 8.

    joe

    April 4, 2008 at 7:49 am

    statistics have a left-wing bias.

    Math is hard!

    OK, so now that’s biology, statistics, astrophysics, paleontology, climatology, and psychiatry. Any other fields of science you’d care to toss out, wingnuts?

  9. 9.

    4tehlulz

    April 4, 2008 at 7:49 am

    *theirs

  10. 10.

    4tehlulz

    April 4, 2008 at 7:51 am

    You forgot about geology! Geological strata merely are God’s way of sifting the faithful from the easily misled.

  11. 11.

    jeff

    April 4, 2008 at 7:51 am

    Bush becomes a Muslim should do it for the 19%.

  12. 12.

    PK

    April 4, 2008 at 7:56 am

    ersonally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    George Bush would personally have to come into their house, shoot the dog, kill their children, burn down the house and shoot them in the face.

  13. 13.

    cmorenc

    April 4, 2008 at 8:02 am

    Things are always going swell inside a Lexus rolling down the highway at 75mph with Sean Hannity cranked up on the radio reassuring you how it’s all Nancy Peolsi / the MSM’s etc. fault that people are being fed all that negative garbage.

    After all, well over 90% of homeowners aren’t in foreclosure, so it’s false to focus on the n’er do well 10%.

  14. 14.

    Punchy

    April 4, 2008 at 8:07 am

    In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

    Yet 4-Mo’-Years-of-Same-Old-Shit McCane is within statistical noise of either Dem candy. Dissonance, meet cognitive.

  15. 15.

    cleek

    April 4, 2008 at 8:07 am

    81% of Americans are worried that they might elect a Democrat!

  16. 16.

    PeterJ

    April 4, 2008 at 8:13 am

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well.

    Considering the crazification factor, I would say that 19% is an exceptionally good number….

  17. 17.

    mellowjohn

    April 4, 2008 at 8:16 am

    that would be the “democrat-led” congress under wingnut usage, wouldn’t it?

  18. 18.

    BH Buck

    April 4, 2008 at 8:17 am

    Yet 4-Mo’-Years-of-Same-Old-Shit McCane is within statistical noise of either Dem candy.

    Some argue we are becoming/became a slave nation. Some argue we are a nation filled with stupid masses. I think both are true.

  19. 19.

    joe

    April 4, 2008 at 8:19 am

    Atrios used to talk about the BTKWBMNF number: the % of the American public would approve of the job George Bush is doing if he bound, tortured, and killed Wilford Brimley during halftime of Monday Night Football.

    He put it somewhere in the 20s.

  20. 20.

    biscuits

    April 4, 2008 at 8:20 am

    I’m with Front Page Bob on this. The 19%ers would be delighted. They would believe it’s only be a matter of time before they’re dining at, as George Carlin would say, “the buffet in the sky”. These people live on spite.

  21. 21.

    ithaqua

    April 4, 2008 at 8:21 am

    “Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?”

    Barack Hussein Obama in the White House.

  22. 22.

    BH Buck

    April 4, 2008 at 8:25 am

    Question is… How the hell did just 19% of the country garner so much control???

  23. 23.

    RSA

    April 4, 2008 at 8:30 am

    In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

    Clearly the problem is the confused wording, which conflates two common English expressions, “being on the wrong track” and “getting off on the wrong foot”. Respondents obviously meant to indicate that things are getting off the wrong track, which means that they are getting on the right track, which means that everyone’s happy.

  24. 24.

    Dennis - SGMM

    April 4, 2008 at 8:30 am

    I’d like to know how the wingers are going to defend this:

    The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial assertions of presidential power.

    Or this:

    The document disclosed, for example, that the administration’s top lawyers had declared that the president has unfettered power to seize oceangoing ships as commander in chief; that Congress has no ability to pass legislation governing the interrogations of enemy combatants; and that federal laws prohibiting assault and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives.

    One section discussed to what extent the president might be allowed to legally maim a prisoner, such as through the use of a “scalding, corrosive, or caustic substance.” A footnote argued that Fifth Amendment guarantees of due-process rights “do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign against the Nation’s enemies.”

    We don’t torture but, maiming is okay. Nauseating.

  25. 25.

    Jen

    April 4, 2008 at 8:33 am

    things are getting off the wrong track, which means that they are getting on the right track, which means that everyone’s happy.

    Now that was funny, as befits someone who appreciates MST 3k.

    I’d like to know how the wingers are going to defend this:

    I’m going to go with, “If the preznit does it, it’s legal. See, e.g., the Yoo memos.”

  26. 26.

    Tim Fuller

    April 4, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Javaphil beat me to it.

    Enjoy.

  27. 27.

    JGabriel

    April 4, 2008 at 8:47 am

    John Cole:

    Personally, I just want to know what would have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    It would be interesting to see the crosstabs on that.

    I’d guess that a good portion of that 19% are fundamentalist Christians, eager that all the signs are lining up for the approach of the end-times.

    Locusts, plagues, etc.? That would just make them happier.

    .

  28. 28.

    Tim Fuller

    April 4, 2008 at 8:50 am

    I wonder when the 81% are going to wake up and form the war crimes committee? We’ve got so many self admitted torturers and their ‘legal’ justifiers that maybe we will need to keep Quantanamo open. Is the death penalty still relevant for war crimes?

    Enjoy.

  29. 29.

    ithaqua

    April 4, 2008 at 8:52 am

    “I’d like to know how the wingers are going to defend this:”

    Terror. Terrorterrorterror. Those who refuse to give up unnecessary freedoms in exchange for essential security deserve neither. These are military operations – do you hate our troops? Expanding the power of a Republican only makes us freer, because Republicans love freedom and Democrats are all fascists. Oh, and terrorterrorterror.

    Terroooooooooooor!

  30. 30.

    Cyrus

    April 4, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    This looks like yet another reason I don’t trust polls. And the problem isn’t bias, the problem is simply that lots of issues can’t be reduced to yes-or-no questions, especially not without including lots of baggage.

    No doubt some portion of that 19 percent is as oblivious as people here are saying, although I doubt millenialists really have such an up-is-down mentality that they say things are going bad because we aren’t getting signs of the end times yet. But I’ll bet a lot more say it’s going well because they realize that a “no” answer reflects badly on Bush and the Republican Party and they’re still loyal to the Party. And I’ll bet a lot of people say it’s going badly, but because the Republican Party didn’t accomplish enough of its agenda, like all the people who think we should invade Iran and who thought the immigration bill Bush supported was too weak and stuff.

  31. 31.

    robroser

    April 4, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    Nope…tax increases would likely do the trick though.

  32. 32.

    Dennis - SGMM

    April 4, 2008 at 9:15 am

    It is America’s great good fortune that Bush’s M.O. is to comprehensively fuck up whatever he’s in charge of and then cast it aside like a broken toy. I wouldn’t rule out his demanding a pardon for himself from the next president as the price of leaving the White House peacefully though.

  33. 33.

    jake

    April 4, 2008 at 9:21 am

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    Dunno. Let’s sacrifice a few of them and find out.

  34. 34.

    Scott H

    April 4, 2008 at 9:24 am

    The NYT poll graphic [1994-2008] is interesting. Perceptions were improving at the end of Clinton’s administration, and the gap is just gator jawed at the end of Bush’s. I have to think most of the linkage is economic; although, Iraq and the general sabotage of government agencies can’t be helping Bush any.

    Still, some folks will think things are going very well, indeed. Excellent!, says Mr. Burns.

  35. 35.

    RSA

    April 4, 2008 at 9:29 am

    Now that was funny, as befits someone who appreciates MST 3k.

    I’m impressed at your memory, Jen, though I realize I should have expected it, from someone with a law degree and a stamp.

  36. 36.

    Napoleon

    April 4, 2008 at 9:37 am

    I wouldn’t rule out his demanding a pardon for himself from the next president as the price of leaving the White House peacefully though.

    My prediction is that he pardon’s himself and issues literally thousands of blanket pardons to his political appointees as he leaves office. This is a dead serious prediction.

  37. 37.

    joe

    April 4, 2008 at 9:39 am

    It is America’s great good fortune that Bush’s M.O. is to comprehensively fuck up whatever he’s in charge of and then cast it aside like a broken toy.

    To the enthusiastic cries of “See? We told you the government doesn’t work,” by libertarians.

    For people who yammer about individualism, they certainly take a collectivist view of presidents’ performance.

  38. 38.

    Z

    April 4, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Oh that’s easy!

    OMGZ! Teh immigrants! Teh Mexican/Russian Vodka add agenst r solverantees! Teh gheys!

  39. 39.

    Tim F.

    April 4, 2008 at 9:44 am

    There is something humorous about Republicans gloating about successfully blocking every Democratic bill and blaming everything that goes wrong with the country on Democrats.

  40. 40.

    Punchy

    April 4, 2008 at 10:22 am

    OT:

    Shorter Gates: Reduction of troops? Ha!

    Seriously, where in fuck does he expect to get these? Does he really have the brass balls to simply fly grunts directly from Iraq to Af-gone-istan?

    WTF is going on?

  41. 41.

    Rick Taylor

    April 4, 2008 at 10:53 am

    My brother used to say of Nixon during Watergate, he could nuke 49 of the 50 states and there’d still be people in the 50th state who’d support him.

  42. 42.

    The Other Steve

    April 4, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Obviously 81% of Americans agree with us right-wingers that the real problem is the damn immigrants, and hollywood/pelosi values!

  43. 43.

    Gregory

    April 4, 2008 at 11:00 am

    I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    Dogs and cats! Living together!

    George Bush would personally have to come into their house, shoot the dog, kill their children, burn down the house and shoot them in the face.

    Nah, Cheney would take care of that last detail.

  44. 44.

    AkaDad

    April 4, 2008 at 11:06 am

    You know very well Bush could slaughter a three-year-old on stage in front of that pesky 19%… and they’d cheer him on.

    I don’t appreciate the hyperbole. He wouldn’t slaughter a 3 year old unless it was gay.

  45. 45.

    Neo

    April 4, 2008 at 11:41 am

    It would be unfair to call it a “Pelosi recession” when a “Rangel recession” is closer to the mark.

  46. 46.

    Jay McDonough

    April 4, 2008 at 11:59 am

    from swimming freestyle:

    Two disappointing and, undoubtedly, related statistics. And stinging indictments of a Bush Administration that is so ideologically bent on deregulation, they’ve given up any stewardship of the American economy. As a consequence, we continue to drift towards an economic downturn European analysts refer to as depression-like while Mr. Bernanke dances nervously in Congressional hearings afraid to say the “R” word and President Bush goes AWOL to a NATO conference. It will require some real Houdini like moves on the part of the Administration and their minions to squirm out of accountability for this gigantic mess.

    Democrats need to loudly remind voters the consequences of leaders allowing outdated and disproven ideological considerations to interfere with the business of managing the government and the, now obvious, implications for the American people.

    Loudly. Very loudly.

    http://swimmingfreestyle.typepad.com

  47. 47.

    jcricket

    April 4, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Personally, I just want to know what wold have to go wrong for the other 19% to recognize things are not going well. Locusts? Rivers of blood? Human sacrifice?

    First of all, there’s a problem with lumping all 81% into the same crowd. Of that 81% Probably 60% think the country is off track because Republicans ran things into the ground from 2000-2008. The other 21% think the Republicans haven’t gone far enough and we’re descending into Soddom and Gomorrah land.

    The 19% are probably comprised of criminals, morally questionable Libertarians profiting off the decrease in oversight during Republican rule and the truly apathetic (i.e. Dems/Repubs are all the same, nothing matters, blah blah blah).

    On the larger issue, though, this proves what Glenn Greenwald is saying in his latest book: Republicans and their ideas are stunningly unpopular. It is an ongoing failure of epic proportions on the part of the Democrats that Republicans aren’t beaten to hell in every election everywhere except where religious zealots and racists are the majority of folks.

    Seriously. The American public has, and increasingly tends to, side with Democrats on every actual policy point – healthcare, war, science, regulation, wages, etc. And in recent years general factors like “trust” are strongly on the Democrats side. That the Democrats have just barely capitalized on this (started in 2006) is the true crime.

    You can’t expect the Republicans to stop being bat-shit crazy – it’s who they are and how they “won” for 30 years. But you should expect the Democrats to forcefully articulate their vision(s) for America and work the marketing to convince Americans that voting Democrat is the only way to get America back on track.

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    April 4, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Front Range Bob Says:

    “statistics have a left-wing bias.”

    Not defending Hewitt, but while statistics don’t have a bias, the style and timing of questions used in polling can and often do.

    Sometimes while discussing the nuances of polling, the raw data just comes along and kicks you in the ass (80,000 Jobs Cut in March; Unemployment Rate Rises ):

    The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.

    Sharp downturns in the manufacturing and construction sectors led the decline, the biggest in five years. The Labor Department also said employers cut far more jobs in January and February than originally estimated.

    The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. More Americans looked for work than in February, when many simply took themselves out of the job market. But employment opportunities remained sparse.

    “Three months in a row of payroll job losses and a sizable negative revision: these are clear signs that the job market is in recession,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economics Policy Institute. “I’m hard-pressed to imagine anyone who would raise doubt to that at this point.”

    In the last 50 years, whenever there has been an employment downturn like the one of the last few months, a recession has followed.

    What is particularly galling is that the Bush Administration rationalizes their stunning incompetence by insisting that everything will be A-Okay if you only believe in the eternal wonderfulness of America. This stupidity is buttressed by the propaganda of goons like Limbaugh and Hewitt,and their firm insistence that any expression of doubt is unpatriotic political heresy fed by the liberal mainstream media.

  49. 49.

    Michael

    April 4, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    You wondered how wingnuts would defend this?

    Face it, the media has been talking about how bad the economy was for years. Despite a great economic upturn after the short recession at the end of the 90’s/early 2000’s, the media general never said there was anything good. Record jobs growth, GDP doing well, housing was going swimmingly, yet, the drumbeat from the Credentialed Media and the Democrat party was that everything sucks.

    But, you know what? The poll may be correct. We have Democrats in Congress trying to constantly surrender in Iraq, reduce our national security, increase taxes, and do all the crazy progressive things they do, and they have a guy who is considered the most liberal Senator for 2007, and who likes to cavort with racists and terrorist, running for President, with a chance to actually win.

    Ask and ye shall receive.

  50. 50.

    javaphil

    April 4, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Record jobs growth, GDP doing well, housing was going swimmingly

    Oh for fuck’s sake! Housing was going swimmingly because it was a ponzi scheme and that scheme was feeding the record job growth but creating construction jobs to build houses nobody really needed.

    The stupid! It burrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssss!!!!!!!!

  51. 51.

    joe

    April 4, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    The last time the Republicans tried to pull a two-minute-hate on Pelosi was during her trip to the Middle East. Remember? After two weeks of every conservative organ hammering her for “undermining the President’s foreign policy,” her approval rates rose by ten points.

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    April 4, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Michael Says:

    You wondered how wingnuts would defend this?

    Face it, the media has been talking about how bad the economy was for years. Despite a great economic upturn after the short recession at the end of the 90’s/early 2000’s, the media general never said there was anything good. Record jobs growth, GDP doing well, housing was going swimmingly, yet, the drumbeat from the Credentialed Media and the Democrat party was that everything sucks.

    What’s almost as nutty is the views of various economists who get so caught up in looking at an aggregate or a global view that they miss the recession that is right in front of their noses. It is clear that there has been an overall decline in the middle class and also a decline in the income from wages that the middle class lays claim to.

    But another piece of the NY Times poll shows how easily economists miss the simple things when looking at the global economy:

    Yet many say they are merely managing to stay in place, rather than get ahead. This view is consistent with the income statistics of the past five years, which suggest that median household income has still not returned to the inflation-adjusted peak it hit in 1999. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, there has never been an extended economic expansion that ended without setting a new record for household income.

    Economists cite a variety of factors for the sluggish income growth, including technology and globalization, and it clearly seems to have made Americans anxious about the future. Fewer than half of parents — 46 percent — said they expected their children to enjoy a better standard of living than they themselves do, down from 56 percent in 2005.

    This reminds me of the old economics joke that demonstrates the fallacy of “averages.”

    If you put Bill Gates and a homeless man in a room, on average they are both doing quite well.

  53. 53.

    RSA

    April 4, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    This reminds me of the old economics joke that demonstrates the fallacy of “averages.”

    Speaking of fallacies, check out this amazing graph from a few months ago on Gateway Pundit’s blog. You get some nice lying-with-statistics-style pictures, and in comments people are still putting store by the average unemployment rate under Bush being less than under Clinton.

  54. 54.

    Mazareth

    April 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Hey John,

    It’s the “Democrat” run Congress. You must have lost your copy of the Republican style manual…

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    April 4, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    javaphil Says:

    Record jobs growth, GDP doing well, housing was going swimmingly

    Oh for fuck’s sake! Housing was going swimmingly because it was a ponzi scheme and that scheme was feeding the record job growth but creating construction jobs to build houses nobody really needed.

    The stupid! It burrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssss!!

    But wait, there’s more! Not only is housing going swimmingly in the US, the whole free market world is prospering. Take that, Islamo-terrorists.

    Except, no…. Foreign banks flee Spanish property debt

    International banks are scrambling to sell their holdings of Spanish mortgage debt at a steep discount, fearing that the country may be sliding into the worst economic downturn in its modern history.

    A blizzard of grim data has soured the mood, capped yesterday by a plunge in PMI purchasing managers’ index to an all-time low of 40.9. Car sales fell 28pc in March, and even Madrid’s legendary tapas bars seem to have lost their late-night sparkle.

    Inmobiliaria Colonial – once the country’s biggest property group –is in emergency talks with banks after Dubai’s Investment Corporation pulled out of a rescue deal.

    Developer Martinsa Fadesa is struggling to restructure €5bn of debt to stave off insolvency.

    Traders says the market price for Spanish mortgage securities has begun to slide abruptly, replicating the pattern seen in the US last year. Large French and German funds and insurers appear to be liqudiating assets in a pre-emptive move, afraid being caught yet again in a violent downturn.

    Ismael Clemente, head of Deutsche Bank’s property arm RREEF in Spain, told a panel of experts in Madrid that foreign banks were now dumping Spansih mortgaged debt at a 40pc discount.

    Mikel Echavarren, director of the property consultancy Irea, said Spain’s housing market was far weaker than the official statitics suggest, warning that prices could fall 20pc to 25pc.

    Maybe somebody needs to do a poll of Spanish attitudes about the economy.

  56. 56.

    maxbaer (not the original)

    April 4, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    My prediction is that he pardon’s himself and issues literally thousands of blanket pardons to his political appointees as he leaves office. This is a dead serious prediction.

    Yeah, I think John Yoo said it was okey-dokey!

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