Dan Balz is reporting in the Washington Post today that "eight months into the Obama administration, Democrats are losing favor with a least a portion of the electorate. Republicans are cheering the findings as a sign of a potentially important change in the political landscape. Democratic strategists offer cautionary notes about what is actually happening."
This reflects findings of Gallup polls over the past couple of months.
But what Balz seems to be suggesting is not that the Republicans are doing better, but that they're getting more attention, more often than not, out of ignorance.
Obama is taking some licks for "overreaching and overspending." No one has spent more than Republicans during its most recent decades of power. Democrats are, in turn, doing a lousy job of getting the word out. Democrats and Independents need some attention from the indifferent Democratic party establishment.
According to the [Gallup] organization's analysis, "Gallup has found that independents are more likely to oppose health care reform and to express concerns about increased government spending and the expansion of government power. Thus, the drop in Democratic support is partly a response to concerns about the policies Obama and the Democrats are pursuing."The Republicans are still in trouble and more evidence is needed to draw real conclusions about the balance of power between the two parties. But if Obama's policies are causing independents, who were critical to Democratic successes in 2006 and 2008, to look more favorably toward the Republican Party, that should be cause for concern at Democratic Party headquarters.
With the exception of desperate loyalists, I think many of us on the left think that -- with the added exception of Howard Dean -- Democratic party apparatchiks have been serial failures since ... can't remember when*. One element in this former Dem quitting the party was, frankly, it wasn't there anymore.
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish I wish he'd go away.
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*Well, yeah. I blame the Clintons, mostly.
