The Outrage Gap

[depakid]

Pretty fair analysis from Terence Samuel at the American Prospect:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11399

"....Gas prices continue to rise, and here is where the monster might begin to stir, because when it takes $46 to fill up a Camry, outrage is overdue. The only thing we know for sure is that immigrants and their boosters are a little more miffed than everyone else, and the GOP keeps feeding their anger with one dumb move after another. But everyone else, it seems, has decided to take the bad with the worse. And those who are angry are mad at both sides. Half of independents think the Democratic and Republican parties are equally corrupt, according to the AP-Ipsos poll. This is the textbook definition of cynicism, and Democrats need to be careful that it does not define a fall campaign in which everyone decides to stay home.

After the 2005 elections, when Democrats won governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher described a very anxious, “on the cusp of being an angry,” electorate. The last thing Democrats need is an electorate on the fence. These people could go either way, if they show up at all.

<snip>

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said this week he is looking to generate a wave that can allow Democrats to take back the House. To that end, Dean thinks Democrats need to nationalize the 2006 election and tie Republican candidates to the distemper the White House has engendered in Americans. “We have to have a national message that will play in every district,” Dean said.

In general, Greenberg agrees: “Having a nationalized context for this campaign is very important, and it has to have an economic framework and a national security framework.” She believes other Democratic advantages are obvious. Using immigration as the example, she said: “No one agrees with <the Republicans> on their approach to any of the issues.” Voters are with Democrats -- all that’s left is to make them mad enough to vote against the other side in November."

[xchrom]

1. see radfringe's thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x954876

the author has a very good point.

i've said for years that discussing the very character of americans is fair game.

especially when it has been so mischaracterized by the right.

[bklyncowgirl]

2. Good article

I wouldn't count on high gas prices at election time, however. I believe that the oil companies will roll back prices just a bit in order to appease the electorate and maintain a Republican Congress which has after all given them everything they could ever want.

[acmejack]

3. It has been their MO in the past.

I wouldn't expect them to tamper with a tried and true recipe for sucess...