What about the presidential candidates? On that topic he was as decisive as he was about welfare. “None of the politicians are speaking to me,” he said. “They should get rid of all of them and start from scratch. They’re all crooks. They waste my money. There’s no management. Social Security is mismanaged. The whole government is mismanaged.” Who will he vote for? “I am definitely not voting for Obama because of the fiscal crisis,” he said, somewhat defiantly. “I think almost anybody is better than him.” I asked David to sum up in a word how he felt about contemporary politics. “Frustrated,” he said.
Linda
But Linda, a 66-year-old sales clerk at a furniture store, will vote for Obama, although she is not totally sold on the president. “Mr. Romney has no idea of what it is like to be me. I don’t think Mr. Romney knows how to put food on the table and gasoline in the car,” she said. “Mr. Obama speaks more to my concerns—but not all of them.” The economy, Linda said, was key. “We need to put people back to work. That’s the bottom line.”
She had some advice for us journalists covering the candidates: “Get them to speak to us in plain language,” Linda advised. “Speak to the peoples’ concerns. Talk to us on our level and make us understand, and maybe that would help us make a decision about how to vote.”
Oy, this piece illustrates how confused and ill-informed people are about the issues and the candidates' positions and accomplishments. You've got a couple of people who want a single payer system or want to protect Medicare and Social Security and they say they're leaning Republican??? Or they don't like high-deductible health care plans and they're thinking of voting for Romney, who favors even higher-deductible plans? And they want more money for education and they're going to vote Republican? Or they're a staunch union member and they call themselves Libertarians? Social Security is "mismanaged"? This lack of accurate information among voters worries me about the future of the country.
#1 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:16 PM
The consensus seems to be that Obama had better reserve a U-Haul next January....
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 02:33 PM
"Oy, this piece illustrates how confused and ill-informed people are about the issues and the candidates' positions and accomplishments."
Know how republicans run campaigns. Especially when the pinch is on and people feel disconnected with their politics and politicians (thanks anti-populist DLC/DNC for sucking all the emotion out of the Democratic message) they base their decisions on impressions and not on specifics. Old link ahead:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/interviews/035
"BuzzFlash: Could Karl Rove have been as successfully politically as he’s been without television?
James Moore: No, absolutely not. Karl understands completely the value of that medium. In fact, he commented to one of our sources for Bush's Brain that he runs all of his campaigns as if people were watching television with the sound turned down. What you end up with, then, is image over substance. Consider the couple having dinner with their children at the kitchen table with the TV on across the room and the sound turned down. They look over and see a smiling President on board an aircraft carrier with "Mission Accomplished" behind him. They might think, "Oh, good. That problem’s over. We can get on with our lives." They tend to compartmentalize and put that away, trusting that if the President of the United States is saying something to them, he’s speaking the truth, and not that it’s the latest of a series of messages to sustain a fiction.
And when one sound bite or image runs out, they come up with another one. That’s what Karl has done so effectively. He simplifies and encapsulates, and distills things to black and white, and right and wrong, and portrays people who are interested in subtlety and nuance and detail and a complete discussion of an issue, as dumb asses. And the American public, because they are busy with their lives, because they’re so worried about their mortgages and their retirement, and the future of their children, and everything else -- their default position is not to read the 3,000-word story in the newspaper, but to look at the thirty-second commercial and say: okay, I get it. I’m going to vote this way. To me, that may be the Achilles heel of our democracy -- if we don’t find a way to stop Karl Rove and his ilk from doing that."
So without a series of positive images of Democratic achievements for the public, and republican PAC's saturating the public with negative ones, voters get very confused very quickly.
Especially when the media is avoiding words like filibuster and obstruction when it talks about what republicans are doing to the country.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 02:53 PM
According to the charts, the media isn't helping.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/the-charts-that-should-accompany-all-discussions-of-media-bias/257961/
When it takes a guy from AEI to point out the problem, and he gets blacked out because of it:
http://mediamatters.org/print/research/201205180007
The media is not being neutral, it is assisting the other side.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 03:00 PM
I'd sure like to see more news organizations do less horse-race coverage and a lot more explaining of what Romney and the Republicans are offering as their alternative to the Affordable Care Act. See my recent article on this, as well as an excellent earlier piece by Noam Levey in the LA Times.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/764555
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23/nation/la-na-romney-healthcare-20120423
#5 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Sun 3 Jun 2012 at 08:01 PM
Yep, the best way to "protect Medicare and Social Security" is to print more money. When will those dumb Republicans get it? Money is free, deficits are a mirage.
In fact, just quadruple the payouts and there goes your recession. Why are people so confused and ill-informed? Thimbles is right - it's all Karl Rove's fault.
#6 Posted by JLD, CJR on Sun 3 Jun 2012 at 11:08 PM
"When it takes a guy from AEI to point out the problem, and he gets blacked out because of it:
http://mediamatters.org/print/research/201205180007 "
Once again, Chris Hayes is doing some of the best journalism on tv:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up-with-chris-hayes/47664014#47664014
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 3 Jun 2012 at 11:08 PM
Why stick with tweedle-dee or even try tweedle-dum when there are clearly other choices who will represent the 99%.
Before anyone should scoff at this concept understand that this nation has never been more ready for a third party. The two-headed war party D & R represent only the 1%.
See Jill Stein's "People's State of the Union"...
http://www.jillstein.org/text_psou
#8 Posted by William Fields, CJR on Mon 4 Jun 2012 at 02:29 PM