Liberal Self-Blindness

Howard Portnoy offers some interesting commentary on the state of things right now:

While Democrats continue to belie their claims that Sarah Palin is a joke or a distraction by focusing as much of their heavy artillery on the former VP candidate as they can muster, the walls are closing in. Barack Obama has just concluded an absolute stinker of a trip to the Far East, which included bowing literally to the Japanese emperor and bowing figuratively to the Chinese. The New York Times, meantime, glumly reports that Senate Democrats may not be able to scrape together the 60 votes needed to open a debate on health care, while Harry Reid's days as a senator may be numbered.

Meantime, the president is feeling increasing heat from the left, who feel jilted over his apparent unseriousness about climate change legislation and calls to bring the troops home from the "war of necessity" in Iran Afghanistan. Then there is the matter of recovery.org claiming job creation in 440 congressional districts that do are non-existent.

Some Democrat strategists are trying to figure out how, with majorities in both houses and a radical president, they are faced with such a mess. Makes you wonder — not about the mess but about the Democrat strategists. Who could have not predicted that the American public would spit up Obama's efforts to nationalize health care, his efforts to plunge the economy into a full-scale depression by taxing energy, and his dishonesty about Afghanistan? Who could have not predicted that a president with no leadership experience and an ego the size of the great outdoors would find the job of leading the free world to be "above his pay grade"?

Right now, the White House claims to be confident that they've got the wind at their backs. To which I say, "Wait until next year." Wait until the mid-term elections come around and Dems trying to save their seats have to explain to constituents how Obama's promises — e.g., that unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if his stimulus were passed — turned out to be false. Or why there are no real jobs being created — permanent jobs in the private sector, not make-work jobs improving stretches of highway that need no improvement. Or wait until 2012, when the "messiah" himself has to defend his handiwork in debates with the Republican contender for his job.

Sarah Palin a joke? Not to anyone whose been watching the generally left-leaning Saturday Night Live in recent months. She's yesterday's news. Their sights are trained now on a new target, who — the more he says and does — makes their writers' work that much easier.

I think this is a great example of the kind of self-blindness of liberals.  Despite all of the self-inflicted economic madness, the bloated freedom-squashing legislation, the failures on foreign policy and national security...liberals are still SHOCKED to discover that the American people are resisting their radical Leftist agenda.  We've talked before about how the Democrat party grossly misread the last couple of elections -- that it was much more about unhappiness with the GOP than people actually wanting what the Dems promised -- and I think this is the logical result of that.

Another fallacy that fits in here is that conservatives think liberals are wrong, but liberals think that conservatives are evil.  That kind of hatred -- or, at minimum, ideological bitterness -- really makes it hard to see reality for what it is.  I think that's what's happening here.

But hey, why stop now?  Let's feed that ideological bitterness some more:

Rasmussen has had Barack Obama under water for weeks on job-approval ratings, but usually they're a leading indicator.  Quinnipiac now shows the same trend, with Obama dropping below 50% approval for the first time in their poll series. 

Rasmussen surveys likely voters, while Gallup and others usually use the broadest measure, adults. Quinnipiac's survey of registered voters makes this more predictive than most, and explains why they see the same trend over a longer period as Rasmussen.

Obama also lost ground on issues, especially the economy.  In October, Obama only garnered a 47% approval on the economy; now it's 43%.  Disapproval on Afghanistan rose to 49%, up seven points in a month. Both are issues on which Obama has tried to be seen as taking charge, and Americans increasingly wonder if he's up to the task.

Independents are continuing to flock to the right, though these liberals' self-blindness is making it hard for them to understand why:

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage.

...a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are registering deep unease with the amount of spending and debt called for under Obama's agenda in an era of one-party rule in Washington.

A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.

And here's the real key:

Why does that matter for Congressional Democrats?  First, midterms are in large part a referendum on the President.  Traditionally, a President loses seats in the midterms anyway, even if the President himself remains popular.  However, for an unpopular President, the losses can get very large — as they did for Bill Clinton, who was more popular at this stage of his presidency than Obama.  Second, Democrats hoped to rely on Obama's popularity to get big turnouts for their re-election campaigns, especially in tough districts.  His collapsing popularity outside of the Democratic base will force them to run against Obama and Pelosi and the Democratic agenda.

The real question is whether or not the GOP can attract those swing voters with a platform of smaller government and fiscal responsibility.  If they can, it will be not be an election so much as an old-fashioned thrashing behind the woodshed, and the self-blinded liberals will once again be SHOCKED.

We can hope.

There's my two cents.