Chuck Todd: "Voters just don't know where to go"

[99th_Monkey]

On CNN, as "the analysis" of the electoral landscape in 2014 elections.


Implying of course that Dems and ReThugs are "equally complicit" and hopelessly so.

Gag me with a spoon.

[GeorgeGist]

1. Chuck Todd on CNN

Auditioning?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Well, that's a sensible statement.

I would say in most every election, about half the voters choose wrong, after all

[99th_Monkey]

10. But it completely glosses over the GOP obstructionist Party-of-NO bullshit.

Without nary a mention, leaving voters to have to figure that out for themselves.

I'm sure many may do just that, but still it is such a sad spectacle to see "news"
organizations be so fucking lazy in their reporting, to the detriment of the whole
nation.

[dlwickham]

3. there are more than a few Democrats who are "complicit"

I live in a state full of them

[99th_Monkey]

5. Listen, I am a bonafide "Obama basher"

and I'm no Clintonite either.

But even I have a difficult time sitting through Churck Todd's brand
of ham-fisted dumbing-down of the electorate.

It's shameless baldfaced idiocy to call that "news".

[dlwickham]

13. what's the saying

even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then

I've never watched him but he's hit the nail on the proverbial head

We as activists need to make sure that these Democrats, hate to use this phrase, fall into line or lose our support

I have a senate candidate in my state who I personally know. She's a great person but she's run a crappy campaign. She's wrong some issues that mean a lot to me and honestly I don't know if I'm going to hold my nose and vote for her.

[99th_Monkey]

14. Dem's "big tent" has not always served the party well, nor the country for that matter

And that's an understatement ... I'm an FDR, JFK, Carter Democrat who is not happy w/ Clinton/Obama centrism.

[calimary]

4. Well, gee, that wouldn't have anything to do with a guy like him, would it...

Mike Lofgren on Truthout.com (note the last paragraph in this excerpt):

(snip)
John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/3079:goodbye-to-all-that-reflections-of-a-gop-operative-who-left-the-cult

[99th_Monkey]

7. I've heard it called "false equivalency" .. which sounds about right.

with a special emphasis on the FALSE part.

[calimary]

11. Totally. BOTH THE SAME!!! BOTH THE SAME!!! Yeah, that's like saying

a brick and a grain of aquarium gravel are both the same because they're both hard.

[Kalidurga]

6. I know where to go...

the same polling place I have gone to since 1994. I also know where UpChuck can go.

[99th_Monkey]

15. He's an odd concoction of attributes

there is something that appears to be sincere and well-meaning,
but then the stuff that comes out of his mouth hardly ever holds
any water, much less hit any high mark ... all the while posing as
a "political analyst" ... and there is SO much missing, when I look
back at the size of the shoes he aspirers to fill: e.g. Walter Cronkite,
Dan Rather, et. al.

Just my take.

[Initech]

8. Are these assholes trying to suppress the vote this year?

[99th_Monkey]

9. Between this M$M hit-piece on Democrats & SCOTUS' championing that Texas voter ID law

That is starting to sound entirely plausible.

[Initech]

12. Wouldn't this be tantamount to treason?

[Hekate]

16. What IS that man babbling about?

Good grief.

[B Calm]

22. Definitely an Air Head, maybe he's confused. He didn't hear Obama mention Syria.

[ladjf]

17. American voters are victims of a massive bombardment of political propaganda,

most of which is paid for by Republican interests thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling about campaign financing.

[socialist_n_TN]

18. It's shocking to me, but this statement I actually agree with........

I've said for a while now (since about 2010 I think because it was in the depths of the Great Recession) that most voters who are not particularly engaged in politics except every two years, vote only with their perceptions. So, the question becomes, "Do you perceive you're better off now than you were last election?". If you do think you're better off, you vote to affirm the party in power. If you don't think you're better off, you vote for a change.

This is the problem with having only two political parties, both of which are neo-liberal on economic issues. Economic issues are the ones that people use to decide if they're better off now than they were last election. If both parties are, basically, supportive of the 1%, neo-liberalism, low business taxes, austerity, and cutting programs that people rely on, then these voters with a lower level of engagement in politics, will wind up see-sawing back and forth between the only two parties allowed to exist in an increasingly desperate attempt to elect SOMEONE, ANYONE, who will improve their situation.

Sometimes it take four years instead of two, but if you don't improve people's lives, they're going to vote for a change. The reasons don't really matter. '06 and '08 it was the Dems turn because they were the "change" party. Things didn't get significantly better, so the Repubs won in '10. Nothing significant changed for people, so the Dems won in '12. Not much has changed, so this year it's probably the Republicans turn.

[hatrack]

19. Actually, Chuck, they do know where NOT to go . . . your show

[B Calm]

20. Don't know where to go because Republicans closed down polling places.

[99th_Monkey]

21. Good one< nt