Writing on TPM Cafe, Theda Skocpol (pronounced SCOTCH-poll) of Harvard just comes right out and says it, and boy does she say it:
The public has no idea what is going on, and just blames Democrats, who appear to be in charge in DC. Now it is happening gain with vital public spending for national economy recovery -- state aid, unemployment relief, and adjustments in taxes and Medicare payments. This legislation is not just important to this or that group. It matters for keeping any semblance of national economic growth going, for creating and saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The President, Congressional leaders, and Democrats of all stripes should be yelling day in, day out, that REPUBLICANS ARE SABOTAGING NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. AND PREVENTING JOB GROWTH, JUST FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. That should be the message all the time, led by the President. Stop the murky compromises and the whining about "helping the unemployed." Stop pretending this is about the deficit -- nothing will hurt the deficit more than delayed economic growth. Say what it happening in terms of the national interest.
Republicans are not "compassionate" toward the unemployed, complain Democrats and bloggers. Sorry, folks, that is not what is happening here.
One Democratic senator, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, has already been blunt about this. The White House has not.
This is a good example of where and why Democrats lose political arguments. As I've written many times, Democrats in general still tend to think that you win political fights by having superior arguments. This of course is manifestly not true. You win political arguments by framing the question the media decide to take up. That means being aggressive in your framing, creating conflict (which the media love), and making sure that reporters will go to the other side and ask them well, how do you respond to this?
Some significant number of Americans who don't hate Barack Obama nevertheless think he wants socialism simply because conservatives have spent 18 months saying that Obama (and the Democrats generally) want socialism. They do that, and quite naturally the media write a bunch of stories in which Republicans allege that Democrats want socialism and Democrats say no we don't. It doesn't matter how the article reads. The Republicans have already won in the framing.
And this is the particular political skill the Democrats lack completely. By merely saying the Republicans want to wreck the economy so they can benefit at the polls, if they said it enough, would show them winning in the framing. And as I've written a couple of times now, the basic question of this election, still not established, is going to be framed in July and August. Time's a wastin'.
