is forming. Matt Yglesias, criticizing a post by Duncan Black (Atrios), also a progressive Democrat, on the lack of action by the White House on unemployment complains:
This, right before our eyes, is a living, breathing example of why presidential speechmaking doesn’t do the things people say it does. It doesn’t even have the intended impact on its intended audience! Is Atrios fired up and ready to go? Prepared to stop writing sarcastic, depressed, and dismissive blog posts and instead go hard against the president’s critics, boosting the morale of the president’s audience? No, he’s sarcastic, depressed, and dismissive because the objective situation is depressing and everyone knows the jobs plan won’t pass.
Isn’t it barely possible that Dr. Black is sarcastic, depressed, and dismissive because he’s tired of hearing half-hearted proposals that he is convinced with a knowledge grounded in experience, that the president himself will give up on before he’s sold it?
Mr. Yglesias does bring up an interesting point. Who was the intended audience for the president’s speech last Thursday? I, too, assumed that it was the progressive wing of the Democratic Party but the proposals were far too lukewarm for that to be effective. Was it the Congressional Republicans? If that’s the case there was, shall we say, a messaging problem.
If it was the Congressional Democrats, it doesn’t appear to have been effective: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already more or less pronounced the Pass This Bill (the American Jobs Act has already been taken) DOA.
Was the target audience the American people, generally? That appears to have misfired as well. According to overnight polls 51% of the people don’t think the proposal will be effective and 45% support it. BTW, what kind of nihilism does it take to support a bill that you don’t think will be effective?
I’m at a loss. I honestly don’t know who the target audience for the speech was. An audience of one?
Update
But in the main, this is what happens to Democrats when they have a President they perceive as weak. They distance themselves from him, running in whatever direction possible. There’s a hack gap here, as Republicans typically fall in line behind their party leader.
Or, as Bill Clinton put it, Republicans want to fall in line and Democrats want to fall in love.
I assume the audience was not in the building; it was the soundbites floating out to the masses as repacked by the pundits. I think 51% not believing the plan would be effective was something I would not have expected (I would have expected approx. 1/3rd yes; 1/3rd no; 1/3rd not sure).
So assuming other polls bear that out, some assumptions need to be re-examined: (1) Did the prior stimulus poison the well with skepticism; (2) did the debt ceiling debate poison the well on all politicians; (3) is the composition of the plan the problem (too much or too little of this or that); (4) are the pundits on-board , or have they actually been reinforcing the notion that there is little the President can do?
That’s my assumption. I thought at the time that it was a one-time-only move, politically if not practically.
This is, I think, my greatest difference with the president and his technocratic strategy. I don’t think you have an ongoing, continuing ability to fine-tune. The very steps you take today will limit future options tomorrow.
Well…you would say that you live in Chicago. :p
BTW, what kind of nihilism does it take to support a bill that you don’t think will be effective?
Doesn’t have to be nihilism. It could be desperation, or the belief that something is better than nothing. One might think this isn’t a jobs creation bill but supports expending UEC is a good idea, etc. Best of all, it gives me a reason to link to this. (And yes, if you think you know what it is, you know what it is.)