The People Have Spoken

Glenzilla dishes on a new New York Times poll showing that Americans want President Obama to stick to his policies and conversely they want Republicans to get their asses on board.

Shortly thereafter, the NYT released a new poll (.pdf) which included findings showing what Americans think about "bipartisanship" -- and it is the exact opposite of what harmony fetishists continuously claim about Americans' supposed desire for "bipartisanship." Consider, first, this question:

Which do you think should be a higher priority right now for Barack Obama -- working in a bipartisan way with the Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign?

Working bipartisan way -- 39%; Sticking to policies - 56%

snip

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now -- working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama or sticking to Republican policies?

Working bipartisan way - 79%; Sticking to policies: 17%

That's actually an amusing result: a huge majority of Americans want Congressional Republicans to be "bipartisan," but don't want Obama to be. Overwhelmingly, then, Americans favor "bipartisanship" only to the extent that it means that Republicans support Democratic policies and abandon their own.

Now to those paying attention know this already. It seems that its only the Villagers who are stuck on this "the Republicans are winning" meme. I for one thing the proliferations of liberal and progressive blogs that shine light on just how out of touch the Village is helps to quell these kinds of counterfactual claims. One can only wonder the impact that blogs could have had on the election back in the year 2000. Its so refreshing not to have to consume news though the Villager lens which distorts what all of America wants into their own percieved biases. If we only relied on mainstream media sources most of us would be convinced that the first month of President Obama's administration had been a disaster and not only that we would believe that most of Americans felt that way. Of course not all blogs are made equal so there are at times Villager mentality expressed on the interwebs, but at least the real information is out there on the good blogs for people to find. And the truth is all of the pushback from the MSM on bloggers is really just them realizing that their reign is now effectively over. The people no longer have to spoonfed what and how we are supposed to feel about our country and our leadership. That is a great step forward for our democracy.