There’s an emerging line in the corporate media that Obama’s recent bump in the polls is due to the perception that he’s shifting to the “center.” There’s a long record of media encouraging Democrats to move to the right; after the midterms, Wise Pundits were saying that Obama had to pull a Bill Clinton in order to get things back on track.
And now we see things like this from the Los Angeles Times (1/24/11):
After his party was dealt an electoral blow in November, Obama embraced a compromise that extended the President George W. Bush-era tax cuts, retooled his West Wing to include more moderate voices–such as his new chief of staff, William Daley–and made new overtures to the business community.
His polls have rebounded on the eve of his second State of the Union address, passing the 50 percent threshold in a series of major surveys.
And on ABC World News (1/23/11):
DAVID KERLEY: Even with high unemployment, President Obama is much higher in the polls than he was just weeks ago. His charm offensive with business, appointments of business-friendly staff and a productive lame duck session have put him on a roll…. Moving to the center, talking about cutting spending, creating jobs is working.
And on NBC Nightly News (1/22/11), pollster Charlie Cook declared:
We started seeing–starting a week or so after the election, we started seeing the president moving, reaching out, compromising, shifting over, reaching out to business, and the proof is in the–is in the polls.
SomehowI doubtthatthere is some unusual public fondness for William Daley, or a desire to see Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce happier with the White House. The generally favorable reaction to Obama’s response to the Tucson tragedy would seem to be a likelier explanation for the current trend. But leave it to the media to chalk up any shift in the polls to Obama’s march to the “middle.”
the other probable reason…the public is hearing less bad news about the economy….
i also think the right’s tone deaf reaction to tucson helped the president’s numbers
Peter, I think something else is at work here.
Dear Misleader’s numbers were up pre-Tucson, weren’t they? I think that points to, as woodward burnstein states, less coverage of the dire economic situation in favor of misleading (that word again) positive stats, and more importantly, the rave corpress reviews the administration’s complicity with corps and their political guard dogs garnered in the last couple of months.
Sadly, a drumbeat in the MSM is often internalized by the public, and I think we can see that effect in this instance.
Would you agree?
And I guess if the Republicans are their guard dogs, that would make the Democrats their … what … lawyers?
Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
Have these dumbass Obama supporters finally woken up? He’s no different than Bush II with a bad spray tan. Banker puppet, warmonger, and war criminal.
He may not be as bad as Bush (YET) but he will almost assuredly win a second term and continue his murdering and plundering.
While all of the stupid “liberals” (like George Clooney and his crowd) sit back and think how heroic Obama is for being…GASP..BLACK!!!
Gag me
Obama would have to take a fairly sharp turn to the left to get to the center from where he stands.
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