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Look, I understand there are legitimate ways of looking at American politics that are very different from mine. And I also know very well that when you are writing on deadline, you don’t necessarily have time to track down links or documentation to every assertion you make.
But Lord-a-mighty, I just read an op-ed column from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review by someone named Salena Zito that is just an endless web of invention and assertion that is remarkably unspoiled by a speck of empirical data. Its thesis is that “Clinton Democrats” (which in an astonishing burst of ignorance she identifies with “Reagan Democrats”) despise Barack Obama and hate the godless socialist direction the Democratic Party has taken under his leadership, and even though they held their noses and voted for him in 2008, they are ready to revolt en masse.
She quotes a few of these people, but provides no evidence whatsoever that they are representative of a significant group of actual voters.
As regular readers know, this “Revolt of the Clinton Democrats” meme makes me especially crazy, probably because I was a Clinton Democrat myself from the first time I heard the man make a speech back in about 1984. But forget about me: what about Obama’s Secretary of State? What about the “Clinton Democrats” who are all over the White House and at the top levels of most federal agencies? What about the Big Dawg himself? Are they all just disguising their intent to shiv the 44th president in the back when he least expects it? And if so, how would Salena Zito know anything about it?
The day Zito’s sage column appeared, the weekly Gallup tracking poll showed Obama’s job approval among Democrats standing at 86%, precisely the same level as Clinton’s job approval among Democrats at the same juncture of his presidency. Obama’s job approval among self-identified moderate Democrats was at 81%. Now today a new weekly summary came out showing Obama’s job approval rating among Democrats had plunged all the way down to 83% (and to a shocking, hardly-anyone-left 76% among the moderates). I don’t think Zito was engaging in prophecy, but in the most bold-faced variety of spin. The easiest (if also the most hammer-headed) way to distract attention from the GOP’s loud-and-proud conservative ideological revolution of the last few years is to claim Democrats have moved equally (or much farther!) to the left, leaving good, patriotic, centrist Democrats stranded and torn between sitting at home angrily stewing on Election Day or joining the Good Ship Mitt. Zito’s only innovation in this dumb interpretation is to claim (again, with no evidence) that “Clinton Democrats” were all wise to Obama’s game from the very beginning, recognizing him as the clear successor to Howard Dean (and presumably George McGovern and Henry Wallace and Upton Sinclair). Unaccountably they voted for him anyway in 2008. But now they will wreak vengeance!
Give me a break.
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mcc on August 06, 2012 5:58 PM:
Can we contrast this with another column by someone else claiming that the Clintons are super angry at Barack Obama for selling out to the Republicans and betraying progressive causes, and the Clintons really want to get out there and fight but Obama and his DLC ways are holding Team Clinton back? I still occasionally run into people who believe who anything progressive that happens in the Obama white house (usually I hear this on lgbt rights advances) must be due to the behind-the-scenes manipulations of Hillary Clinton.
Jim, Foolish Literalist on August 06, 2012 6:16 PM:
Isn't the Pitt T&R Richard Mellon Scaife's organ? Just looking at the titles of Ms Zito's other columns...
(Obama´s Hyphenated America - July 7, 2012
Yes, Pennsylvania Really Is Up for Grabs - June 23, 2012
New Deal Democrats Not Part of Obama Electoral Map - June 19, 2012
Class Warfare´s Losing Record - June 2, 2012
Biden´s Words Fall on Deaf Ears in Ohio - May 19, 2012
The Average White Guy Vote - May 12, 2012)
...suggests she's at best a concern troll, and the sources, PTR, RCP, suggest she's just a right winger. I'll save my contempt for the 'neutral' reporters who parrot Republicans who say they miss Bill Clinton, whom they tried to impeach and called (pretty much) all the names they call Obama, because they could work with him, and who despair at the radical left trend of Obama, who is proposing tax policies that are, by most measures, to the right of the ones Clinton passed in '93, with zero "bipartisan" support.
@TeaPartyCat on August 06, 2012 6:19 PM:
God bless you for throwing Upton Sinclair in the mix!
c u n d gulag on August 06, 2012 6:29 PM:
If you don't work in "journalism" as a pundit, "speculation" is what is known as "gossip."
Is Ms. Zito a pig-ignorant moron, who writes her columns when she has consumed enough gin to have Peggy Noonan driven to Detoz, and meth to floor Ted Nugent, and make him sound even more like a babbling imbecile than usual?
And that her lover is a transgendered mountain goat, who's still confused about his/her sexuality?
Is it irresponsible to speculate that that's the case?
Why, it would be irresponsible not to.
Mimikatz on August 06, 2012 6:58 PM:
Well of course it makes sense. If this is just like 1980, and Obama is Jimmy Carter, then Mitt is Reagan, who was responsible for the conversion of all those "Reagan Democrats" who were the key to his election, so then Clinton could only have been elected by poaching them back, so Clinton Dems = Reagan Dems and they hate Obama like they (or their predecessors) hated Carter, so Mitt is Reagan and he will win,
Or something.
DJ on August 06, 2012 7:08 PM:
Yes, the Tribune-Review is owned by Sciafe, rendering it unworthy of regard, and unfit to wrap a fish.
Rip on August 06, 2012 9:07 PM:
Yep, just like all those "Clinton Democrats" who voted for McCain because Obama was so mean to Hillary. They sure swung that election.
These idiots seem oblivious to the fact that Obama got 22 million more votes in 2008 than Clinton ever got, and 15 million more votes than Reagan ever got. Over half of the 2012 electorate isn't even old enough to have voted the last time Reagan ran.
Kevin S. on August 07, 2012 12:33 AM:
With Dean in charge of the Democratic National Committee, progressives worked to convince rank-and-file Democrats that victory required pursuing a 50-state strategy and dismissing people in "fly-over" states as not knowing what was good for them.
This may be my favorite quote from the article, just because of the obvious self contradiction. A "50-state strategy" involves writing off whole swathes of states? And of course, Dean has been an advocate of expanding the electoral college map since his chairmanship.
bluestatedon on August 07, 2012 8:22 AM:
Yes, Pennsylvania is so up for grabs that the Romney campaign has completely stopped TV advertising in the state.
This is hardly news, but no Republican can open up their pie hole today without confirming their remarkable indifference—if not outright hostility—to fact and reality. Of course, when you consider that a large swath of Republicans believe that Adam and Eve had vegetarian dinosaurs for neighbors in the Garden of Eden 5,000 years ago, it's really not surprising. The GOP has become a theocratic party whose positions on the most important questions facing us is determined by adherence to the Frankenstein monster of Evangelical Christianism surgically grafted onto ignorant jingoist American Exceptionalism.
Renai on August 07, 2012 9:11 AM:
"...hate the godless socialist direction..."
You know, I hear this an awful lot, what I don't hear is specifics.
But Harry Reed lies!!
sigh...
John B. on August 07, 2012 11:24 AM:
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review is a Scaife mouth organ, a far, far-right publication as close to Nazi-ism as Hitler's moustache. You shouldn't link to it. It only encourages them. If you read it, be sure to take a bath afterwards.
artem1s on August 07, 2012 2:31 PM:
I think this is a serious strategy on someone's part (Rove maybe). someone somewhere thinks they can swing certain democrats away from Obama this fall. I say this because for months now I have been getting robo and live calls from republican canidates, PACs, and other right leaning organizations. I have no real proof of this, but I suspect its because I am a white female over the age of 40. Even though I have voted Democrat in the same precinct for the last 20 years, I have been targeted as some sort of undecided or swing possibility. I suspect my zip code may be at play; mostly white, older, urban, rust belt, and retired. And the neighborhood is on the brink of either urban renewal or blight depending on which day you look out the front door.
they really, really want to believe that there is some secret block of voters out there that they can capture if they can only find the right VP candidate. Because us wimmenz, we'll vote for good hair, or Palin or, whatever.
Anyway, its really creepy and starting to freak me out a little bit. But in no way makes me react with anything but revulsion at the thought of voting republican.