In the last week we've had Iraq finally complete it's government by finding a Defense and Foreign Minister, Turdblossom's impending indictment and frog-march has fizzed just in time for him to bitch-slap liberals for being "cut and run cowards", the so-called "most dangerous man in Iraq" was taken out by a 500-lbs that left the building he was in a pile of rubble (but left the man himself in prestine condition ripe for a snuff photo orgy around the globe), Ann Coulter has finally put those "Jersey Girl Harpies" in their place, and the President just had a fabulous photo-op doing laps and shaking hands around the Green Zone before turning tail getting his ass out of dodge before somebody blew it off.Oh yeah? Last poll I saw had W at 42%, which is rather more than a two-point hop above 29%. The generic Dem-v-Rep spread in congress has narrowed to 9 points. The people are clearly anxious to support this president. More than that, they are anxious to support conservatism.
The Net result?
He's up all of two-points in the polls.
Vyan's main point is that the war in Iraq is largely a matter of staged theatrics. And that's my point as well -- with this proviso: The American citizenry continues to mistake melodrama for reality. They feel a desperate need to convince themselves that the hallucinations they've taken for real are real. They will never look behind the curtain to see Frank Morgan pulling levers; to do so means parting with comforting illusions. The people still identify with the party in power. To insult Bush is to insult the flag; to insult the flag is to insult the people.
What really counts in Congress is the race-by-race analysis. Zogby sums up the situation thus:
Poll: "Had enough?" Not Enough to Lift Congressional Dems to PowerI could go on to cite some depressing numbers, but why bother? The bottom line is the bottom line.
The electoral situation is especially grim when we recognise the vote-snatching factor. I suspect that Francine Busby really did lose the race in CA-50, but that probably outcome does not mitigate the outrageous treatment of voting equipment which occurred during that election, and which violated all chain-of-custody standards. Nobody is reporting on this ghastliness -- with the exception of Brad Friedman and perhaps a few others.
We've lost the most important battle of all -- the battle for American hearts and minds.
Right-wingers across the nation, on radio, on TV, have felt free to repeat the canard that left-wing bloggers supported Zarqawi and expressed sorrow at his death. (That falsehood was even said of this humble blog.) The nation remains convinced that the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. A surprising number of people remain persuaded that the Iraqis view us a liberators. A large number of your fellow Americans still think that Saddam and Osama really did work together, and that Saddam had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium. The majority of the American people will applaud when Bush nukes Iran to stop Iranian development of nuclear power. Half the country agrees with Ann Coulter's lunatic contention that evolution is a religion and creationism is science. A huge segment of the populace thinks Hillary Clinton is a communist. Literally.
Net neutrality is doomed to defeat. Face it: We cannot win in the Senate. Soon, corporate control of internet news will be complete.
Would you rather have hope, or would you rather have the facts?
6 comments:
There are some days and weeks when I would rather not read any newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television news. This is one of those weeks. Your post is a good synopsis of the "state of the union"--hence, my mental inertia. Will things get better? We came so close and now seem so far.
Joe, be careful you don't start thinking like them, and believing that the illusion is the reality. It isn't. It's just an illusion that cloaks the reality.
Reality will have its due, and when it brings its chainmail fist crashing down on that elaborate illusion, it will vanish in a puff of malodorous dust.
It is just unfortunate that many innocents will suffer along with the many guilty.
Watch the financial markets. In the end, that is where the piper goes to collect his pay.
The bottom line is that the American populace as a whole is comprised of dumb, ignorant people who only hear the headlines and then draw the conclusions that the administration wants them to. Rove, Cheney and company knows this all too well, and they exploit it to maximum effect.
joe, though it may well be true that the congressional races are uphill battles, at best (just the way tom planned it), please take care when comparing polls.
it is actually not statistically appropriate to compare bush's 29% from one poll to the latest at 42% from another. i'll try to locate the grid of W's polls over time for each pollster; it's the better way to analyse the data.
i'm inclined to disagree with the doom and gloom. though we may not recover congress in the fall, or even democracy in our lifetime, i am encouraged by what the polls look like when the people have time to scrutinize what's really going on.
the jury is still out on so many things, not least of which is the economy, so keep watching for the other shoe to drop.
more on all this tomorrow. i'm one whooped puppy.
You have to remember that the fools, the knaves and the thieves have an enormous advantage -- they control the media.
There is probably no way to win this fight. Even if the system collapses, the American people will never understand why. And no one in power is likely to tell them. Even if someone did, no one would broadcast it.
The shameful maddening spectacle of working class people supporting Republicans is the glaring result of a country with one political party. It may have two divisions (wholly corporate-owned, and largely corporate owned), but the Democratic subsidiariy is as unlikely to tell the truth as the Republican one.
The few of us who look to people like John Kerry to defend out interests are (if not to blame) similarly out of touch with reality (as is John Kerry himself).
On the other hand, things will be much worse in Iraq on November 2, than they may seem today. Whether that engenders any constructive change is another question....
I think you are adopting a defeatist attitude, Joe. What we are seeing is merely a propaganda offensive on the part of Bush, Rove, and the GOP. They have mounted such offenses in the past, only to have the reality of their corruption continue to be exposed. It is always one step forward for them and two steps back. There are plenty of corruption and other GOP-related criminal investigations brewing and just a couple of real Democratic ones. The GOP ship is slowly sinking, even if once in awhile a bubble of air rises from the deep to make us think it is about to resurface.
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