Posted by
Bill Crawford on Friday, March 13, 2009 12:38:33 PM
Wow. What a shocker. Presidential polling drops to the low 50's, and nobody covers it. Gosh. Imagine my surprise.
This is the new world of American journalism: the bulk of the mainstream media became Obama acolytes last year, and they continue today. They want his policies, they think they are long overdue.
The First Family is feted in the circulars like the new coming of Camelot. You can tell them straight off- they often present his approach as "middle of the road", "mainstream" or "centrist"- even though it has the likes of yours truly reeling and thinking it may be a real world resurrection of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged".
Here is the worst part about his polling: the large numbers of "strongly disapprove". You can hold an approval rating of 55% or so and still hold a lot of sway, but when one third of the electorate thinks you need to be stopped cold, you are going to lose a lot of swing voters in the process.
The polarizing numbers come from him laying all his cards on the table as quickly as he did. I think Obama had the wisdom to sense that so early in his term and with the economy in the state it is, there wasn't a better shot at getting it all done. Maybe it is the wisdom of Rahm Emmanuel, who knows?
Whatever. The original point being, the mainstream media flushed their credibility down the toilet last year, and now they are starting to pay for it. It is part of the reason why so many newspapers are in circulation trouble right now.