Obama Reclaiming Outsider Status

[wyldwolf]

Obama Aides Rip Cable News, D.C. Media And Political Elite

Here’s an interesting dynamic: The yawning gap between what the pundits say about who’s winning the stimulus war and what the polls say the public thinks has created an opening for the Obama team to reclaim Obama’s campaign outsider mantle, which had slipped away during the transition to governing.

Case in point: White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, on the presidential plane today, directly targeted cable news as out of touch with America when asked about polling on the stim package. From the White House transcript:

I think it’s illuminating because it may not necessarily be where cable television is on all of this. But, you know, we’re sort of used to that. We lost on cable television virtually every day last year. So, you know, there’s a conventional wisdom to what’s going on in America via Washington, and there’s the reality of what’s happening in America.

That’s not all. In response to another question about Obama’s scheduled rally today in Elkhart, Indiana, Gibbs directly attacked the White House press corps. “We’ll get to measure whose questions were better over the course of the day — the voters of Elkhart or the reporters of Washington,” Gibbs says.

There’s still more. According to the pool report, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod ran with this ball on the campaign plane, too, saying that the new Gallup poll proves how out of touch Beltway insiders are.

“If I had listened to the conversation in Washington during the campaign for president, I would have jumped off a building about a year and a half ago,” Axelrod said.

Obviously there’s a bit of shtick going on here. Still, the Obama team is clearly embarking on a new and more aggressive strategic effort to draw attention to the size of his popular mandate and paint Washington as a place designed to obstruct the public’s will. As Josh Marshall noted recently, Obama hadn’t been tapping the real source of his power — his popular support — as well as he might have. The Obama team is clearly trying to change that.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/stimulus-package/obama-aides-rip-cable-news-dc-media-and-political-elite/

[K Gardner]

1. Cable news is and has been a clear and present danger. n/t

[firedupdem]

2. Love Axelrod! Great statement. I'm glad I realized I needed to

turn off the tv last week. I was headed for a bridge myself!

[zbdent]

3. somebody who actually gets it ...

cable media is not a Dem/Lib's friend ...

[MarjorieG]

4. Exactly, and the press is unable to ask better questions, not just unwilling.

Not just the group think, partisan bubble. They got jobs for on air presence, or aspects other than economics acumen.

In the 70s, my reporter husband got a fellowship to study economics because the media couldn't report on that recession. We need a new focus on getting people to understand and report the issues, and not take talking points at face value. The current spending=stimulus misunderstanding was key to early lack of support, plus the public's understandable reluctance to spend.

He was great in Elkhart, btw.

[underpants]

5. Obama went populist today

very effective communication of his points on the stimulus

[Jane Austin]

6. It's not just reporters who don't know anything about economics.

From what I've seen in the past week, Republican Congressional leaders - both Senate and House - don't have a clue about basic economics.

Someone in the administration needs to offer a continuing education course in Economics 101.

[anonymous171]

7. Good. Obama needs to recapture the Outsider aura.