US continues move to the right; Dems don't get it

[Arrian]

538 did indeed do a post on that Center for American Progress study. Direct link to the study:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/pdf/political_ideology.pdf

-Arrian

[Drake Tungsten]

Don't post CAP studies unless you are willing to accept Heritage ones.

I, of course, will accept both.

[Arrian]

Che posted an article about the study. I went looking on 538 to see if Silver had any posts about liberal/conservative ID, and found one about that same study. Dan already said he was going to check out Che's links, so I provided a link right to the study, instead of an article/blog post about it.

It's obviously a partisan outfit and I'm not making any claims about their study. None.

-Arrian

[chequita guevara]

And people will likely continue to see this as a problem of the GOPs making

Obama owns this economy and the deficits now.

I think you over estimate the influence that conservatives (or radicals) have to tell moderates and liberals that Obama owns this mess. Most people I speak with still put full blame on Bush. Hell, I can't even get people to blame Obama for bombing Pakistan. FOX has no influence at this time beyond its cult.

[chequita guevara]

Che posted an article about the study. I went looking on 538 to see if Silver had any posts about liberal/conservative ID, and found one about that same study. Dan already said he was going to check out Che's links, so I provided a link right to the study, instead of an article/blog post about it.

It's obviously a partisan outfit and I'm not making any claims about their study. None.

-Arrian

Only ThinkProgress is a blog (and definitely partisan). The other source was the Pew Research Center. All I really looked at were the graphs.

The ThinkProgress was interesting because the graph there shows an equal number of people call themselves progressive as liberal. Although undefined, progressive, historically, has been seen as left of liberal. Nowadays, with people like Hilary Clinton using the term, it has ceased to have any real value to differentiate the left from the center-left.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think you over estimate the influence that conservatives (or radicals) have to tell moderates and liberals that Obama owns this mess.

They don't need any influence. Obama just spent trillions of dollars putting his stamp on the economy and has been trumpeting his involvement on TV at every opportunity. It's his.

[chequita guevara]

If you shoot me in the arm, and my doctor has to amputate, I'm not blaming the doctor for taking my arm. I'm blaming you.

Right now, and likely for the foreseeable future, most people blame America's economic woes on the GOP. They may not like the deficit, but they see it as a necessary evil to restart the economy.

[Drake Tungsten]

It's all on Obama now

Political observers say that with the events of the last week, accountability for the nation and its current problems has clearly shifted from Bush.

Reporting from Washington -- In the span of a single week -- from the day Arlen Specter turned Democratic to the moment Congress passed the White House's budget blueprint and on through the opening of a spot on the Supreme Court -- President Obama crossed a fateful line: From now on, it's his country.

Every president inherits a tangle of problems from his predecessor. War and recession, natural disaster and foreign crises. And for some undefined interval, new presidents argue that they should not be accountable for the troubles that arose on another's watch.

But inevitably, responsibility shifts. And for Obama, that time came last week, bringing both greater opportunities and greater risks.

On the economy, Obama won approval Wednesday of a $3.5-trillion budget plan that aims to help pull the country out of the worst recession in decades. It also smooths the way for one of the president's signature domestic priorities -- overhauling the nation's healthcare system.

At the same time, the budget projects a whopping $1.2-trillion deficit in 2010, undercutting Obama's ability to bemoan Bush-era red ink.

"It is now absolutely his economy," said Paul Light, a New York University professor who specializes in presidential transitions. "I don't think that the public will continue to believe that this was all George W. Bush's doing. And every day that goes by, it becomes more Obama's than Bush's."

Ever since his inauguration, Obama has nurtured the idea that responsibility for grim economic conditions rested with former President Bush. As recently as Wednesday, Obama sought that political cover when it was announced that the economy had shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter of the year.

Speaking at a town hall meeting near St. Louis, he said: "Now, we've got a lot of work to do, because on our first day in office we found challenges of unprecedented size and scope."

But the events of the last week made Bush seem less relevant, presidential experts and political strategists said. As Obama's imprint on the economy grows, so does his ownership of the issue.

That ownership became almost literal as Obama moved more deeply into the banking and auto industry crises.

As the Treasury Department finished "stress tests" on 19 of the country's biggest banks, the administration became further enmeshed in the workings of the financial system.

And on Thursday, Obama announced he was pushing Chrysler into bankruptcy. He may take another corporate icon, General Motors, down the same path.

As a kind of shareholder in chief, the president now is responsible for guiding companies with thousands of union workers and investors -- firms that remain vital to the economies of states that stretch across the nation's industrial heartland, from Pennsylvania to Illinois and south into Kentucky and Tennessee.

Though the auto industry was in crisis before Obama reached the White House, his team has been in charge of the rescue effort for the last four months.

"The perception will be that Barack Obama owns this bankruptcy," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. "He owns this economy." ...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-president3-2009may03,0,7838006.story

[Arrian]

So, a university professor and a republican pollster back your claim. Ok.

I think we're still in a transition phase on this. At some point, people won't care about Bush's failures anymore. I don't think we're there yet. Have there been polls on this?

-Arrian

[chequita guevara]

At what point did the majority of Americans blame FDR? 1984?

[Arrian]

I'm not arguing that Americans will blame Obama for starting the banking crisis & recession (a small fringe group of wackos aside). I'm saying that, at some point, Obama will "own" the state of the economy. Good or bad. Drake's right about that. I just don't think we're there yet.

-Arrian

[chequita guevara]

That's my point also. Not only are we not there, but we aren't even close yet. Drake and I and you may understand that Obama is large and in charge and that he ought to be held responsible for this, that, or the other thing, but I think it's clear we are exceptional people, who put a lot of thought into this.

As you and I correctly note, however, most people don't and won't, probably for quite some time.

[Ramo]

Names please.

From a structural point of view, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad have a great deal of power (Chairs of Finance and Budget, respectively). For example, Baucus is writing the health care bill (Moynihan, incidentally, helped to doom health care when he chaired Finance).

Since the Republicans filibuster everything at this point, the conservative Democrats in the Senate (plus Snowe and Collins) generally have a great deal of power. Lieberman and Ben Nelson (along with Specter, Snowe, and Collins dictated the shape of the stimulus). Besides those mentioned, Lincoln, Pryor, Landrieu, Bennet, and Carper stand out as particularly right wing.

Conservatives now are over a third of the population. Liberals are about 20%. Believe it or not, this never used to be the case. What's your evidence that this isn't the case?

You're making **** up here. Conservatives have had a large advantage for decades. Ideological identification is basically static. The more meaningful metric is issue polling, which looks very good for the Dems.

[Theben]

The GOP needs to hitch its wagon to fiscal responsibility and ride that issue back into office. Obama has set them up perfectly with his insane deficit spending.

I don't see why the GOP makes a serious and genuine bid for more minority representation. There are a lot of essentially conservative people there who are pushed into the Dem tents by the GOP.

And Obama owns the economy but not the deficit, yet.

[Drake Tungsten]

And Obama owns the economy but not the deficit, yet.

His budget just passed. The deficit is all his...