A while back when this board was being flooded with ubiquitous headlines announcing that unions were abandoning Democrats and the President, I posted an article reporting on an interview by Candy Crowley of Jim Hoffa and a transcript of the interview itself. The article repeated the narrative of great tension between Democrats and unions. But, the transcript itself showed that Hoffa was slamming on Republicans despite the efforts of Candy Crowley to try to get Hoffa to buy into the premise that labor was unhappy with President Obama. Indeed, rather than describe this interview accurately, we were treated to a series of articles saying that Hoffa called Apple unpatriotic!
Well, here is an article on MSNBC addressing the liberal disaffection myth that is pushed by the corporate media. Indeed, a while back, I posted a series of articles from Fox News repeating this narrative, and asked whether this was evidence that Fox was being sensitive to the concerns of liberals or whether it was evidence that Fox was trying to promote this narrative.
Finally, when the right wing was pissed and had got their assed handed to them in 2008, what was the narrative being pushed? It was not that the right wing was so upset that they were not going to vote for establishment Republicans! Instead, the narrative was Tea Party with small gatherings of a few people being promoted as evidence of a massive movement. Eventually, with substantial financial support from astroturf groups like Freedom Works, the Tea Party types became the astroturf stormtroopers of the right wing.
In sharp contrast, following 2010, the beltway media busily promotes the narrative of disaffected liberals and Democrats who react to their unhappiness with the lack of action by the (Republican dominated) 112th Congress by blaming the President and Democrats. Even as Republicans take historic steps to tank the economy leading to the worse Congress ever, Republicans are given a free pass and the President is blamed for historical lows for legilation being passed by Congress.
Now, if President Obama was vetoing legislation left and right, critics might be able to blame him for the lack of action by Congress, but you would think that Boehner and Cantor should get some blame as well. But that is not the narrative. Indeed, the lack of action is praised as savy politicing by Boehner and Cantor. Yes, up becomes down with the beltway media. Sadly, large segments of the American public begin to buy into this narrative and refuse to hold Republicans accountable, and blame Democrats for gridlock caused by the actions of Republicans.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/14/7760560-the-liberal-disaffection-myth
President Obama’s base has abandoned him – so goes the conventional Beltway wisdom. The problem with this accepted narrative: There’s no data to back this up, according to the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey, which was conducted in late August, was abysmal for the president, save for his head-to-head match ups with GOP presidential contenders. But it also included these numbers:
-- By an 81%-14% margin, Democrats approved of his job performance, essentially unchanged from his 82%-14% score in July.
-- Among liberals, it was 74%-21% -- exactly the same numbers from July.
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