Liza
> From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 00:04:59 -0500 (EST)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Clarke Effect: Bush's Poll Numbers IMPROVE!!!
>
>
> On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>> I think the Clarke stuff will matter in the long run. It's knocking
>>> out Bush's main plank.
>>
>> According to the NY Post version of a Newsweek poll, large numbers of
>> people are dismissing Clarke as "partisan" and "self-interested."
>
> Well the emphasis here is on long run. I think it's reasonable to picture
> the present electorate as strongly polarized, with 40% in each camp not
> moving and 20% in play. Those 20% are by definition the least political
> voters in the country.
>
> So I think it's fair to assume these are not people that are watching
> Sunday news programs 7 months before the election, nor watching C-Span,
> nor reading online pundits rehash C-Span. It also follows that this
> quintile isn't affected by crucial details when they come out. They're
> affected when -- and if -- the frame of reference of changes, if the basic
> narrative changes.
>
> So if Clarke affects them, it will be indirectly in the long run. But I
> think that could happen. Clarke has suddenly made it perfectly
> respectable to say on mainstream TV that
>
> 1) the war in Iraq was a mistake because it undermined the war on
> terrorism;
>
> 2) that 9/11 could have been stopped; and
>
> 3) that we are unsafer now than we were before.
>
> If those points are taken up and become tropes, they'll matter. When
> they've been repeated over and over and over as simple declarative
> statements and the reaction person nods as if Yeah, that's true. Or when
> it causes reporters start asking follow up questions, which there's been a
> plague of this week in the oddest places. (I even saw someone do it on
> Fox, to Rumsfeld.) And this administration, so good at being on script, is
> unbelievably clumsy when they're forced to improvise.
>
> There's enough time to establish a new mainstream common sense by the time
> of the Repug convention. It's by no means guaranteed. But the initial
> polls would have little bearing on the question of whether that will
> happen.
>
> Also its true when people say Clarke is self-interested and partisan.
> He's partisan in the everyday sense of the word, meaning he criticizes one
> side much more than the other. What he is saying (as opposed to how) will
> take a bit more time to filter in. It's something that most people in
> that middle quintile will find it hard to conceive of: the entire Iraq war
> had *nothing* to do with terrorism? So *every* time they said it did,
> they . . . . ? For people who don't already think like this, something
> like this requires a gestalt shift. Which takes time.
>
> Michael
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