Specter Takes Hit From Protests?

by: Chris Bowers

Thu Aug 13, 2009 at 12:00


Disclaimer: I am working for Joe Sestak's campaign. Follow the campaign on the official website, on Twitter and on Facebook. Contribute at Act Blue

Arlen Specter has received more press for having right-wing protesters yell at him than any other Senator. According too a new Rasmussen poll, it doesn't seem to be helping him electorally:

Rasmussen, 8/11, 1,000 LVs (6/16 numbers in parenthesis)
Pennsylvania Senate general election
Toomey: 48 (39)
Specter: 36 (50)

Toomey: 43 (35)
Sestak: 35 (41)

Pennsylvania Senate primary election
Specter: 47 (51)
Sestak: 34 (32)

Here are my thoughts on this poll (they do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of Joe Sestak):

  1. Rasmussen may ask pro-Republican questions on issue polls and commentary, but I have never seen a reason to discount their election polls.

  2. It is just one poll, and needs confirmation from other sources before being taken as an overall trend.

  3. Both Specter and Sestak have lost ground in the general election, reflecting a deteriorating political environment for Democrats in general.

  4. Specter, who has received massive press attention for the negative reaction at his town halls, dropped 7% more against Toomey than Sestak. He also lost 6% against Sestak in the primary.

  5. Given all of this, it is hard to see how the "extreme protesters vs. Democratic politicians: media narrative is helping Democrats right now. No politician has received more attention in this narrative than Arlen Specter, and a poll taken after his town hall in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, shows him losing substantial ground.
While it may be easy to dismiss the vague, abstract Gallup poll released on the protests yesterday, polling on Specter is far, far more difficult to dismiss. The extensive attention he has received makes him the perfect test case, really.

As I argued earlier this week, we want a people vs. the powerful debate on health care, and it seems like we are getting one. Unfortunately, the version we are getting is wingnut protesters versus Democratic politicians, instead of average Americans versus a broken, for-profit health care system. No matter how crazy those protesters may seem, it is still going to come off as individual Americans versus politicians. Many Americans will be sympathetic with anyone standing up to politicians, purely out of spite.

The "wingnut protesters are crazy" narrative doesn't seem to be working. Certainly, it hasn't been helpful for politicians like Specter to video of protesters yelling at them spread all over the airwaves and internets. I think that we in progressive media have gone overboard in focusing on right-wing protesters.

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Chris Bowers :: Specter Takes Hit From Protests?

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Specter Takes Hit From Protests? | 23 comments
We need to focus on insurance companies. (4.00 / 7)
Every story needs a villian, and in this case, the villian is actually guilty. Plus everybody already hates them.

We should be framing this debate as "we need the public option/medicare for all to protect us from the greedy, cold-blooded insurance companies."

If you liked Bush, you'll love McCain

I think both Chris and Sadie (0.00 / 0)
have hit the nail on the head.  The message should be insurance reform!!  Calling the protestors "wacko, nutjobs, wingnuts, crazy etc." will not work.  Most people, even if the never attend one of the town hall meetings will see asscoiate themselves with the protestor.  it is the protestor against the politician regardless of who the polictician is.  given the media coverage of these events and the inability of the politicians to control and respond adequately to the situation, the public is picking sides and are siding with the protestors regardless of the message.  

The focus needs to be on greedy heartless insurance companies who care nothing about people and everything about the bottom line.  more people can identify with this and its a much easier pill to swallwo than health care reform.  We still don't really know what health care reform will look like.  its being torn down before its even written.

[ Parent ]
Yup, insurance company execs (0.00 / 0)
(and stockholders) gotta be smiling. Heh, heh, heh, distracted them again.
[ Parent ]
Check out (4.00 / 1)
Gallup graph rating the confidence people have in institutions.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/159...

At the bottom of the list.

HMOs
Congress
Big Business

[ Parent ]
Specter's credibility was shot way before the townhalls... (4.00 / 1)
No one likes him...  This is more of an anti-Specter vote than anything else...

Sestak still is lacking in name recognition... as evidenced by the primary polling...

And, it's still summer... summer can present quite a mirage...

And, once again, it's Rasmussen...  They manipulate GE polls, too, until they get close tot he election.  Remember that not ONE Rasmussen poll had Obama winning Ohio EVER!


REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

Likely Voter Models (4.00 / 1)
I'd like to know how any pollster can credibly predict Likely Voters 15 months before an election (or 9 months in the case of the primary).  That's ridiculous.

It doesn't take away from Chris' larger point, though, which I think is pretty spot-on.

[ Parent ]
Let's be honest here (4.00 / 4)
There are a lot of liberals who love love love talking about/fixating on right-wing extremism. For them it's a form of pornography.
yes; doing so accomplishes so much, for so little work: (4.00 / 2)
quick confirmation of existing biases that allows one to blame 'stupid americans' for the failures of the left.  
[ Parent ]
At the end of the day (4.00 / 5)
there are three unpleasant facts that I think we are simply not facing up to:

1.  Limbaugh and company have shown a very real ability to generate conservative activists.  Yes, I know that some are being paid, but at the end of the day they are getting people to show up at these town halls.

2.  The protesters are influencing the debate, in part because  we are overreacting to them.  This is, in fact, they goal of ANY protester: to generate a reaction.  

3.  The inability to pass Health Care Reform before the recess was a strategic political blunder of the first order.  We may never fully recover from it.


For #3, we all knew that.... (0.00 / 0)
...the white house knew that.... too bad the blue dogs didn't figure that out... I hear that Barron Hill, the leader of the blue dogs, is lashing out at the protesters as "political terrorists" and not holding any townhalls.. I'm crying for you Barron... That problem is all your fault!  YOU chose to go home without voting for a bill... YOU live with the consequences!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
[ Parent ]
If the WH knew that ... (4.00 / 1)
why didn't they lean on the Blue Dogs? ... Sad to say .. I think you are wrong .. the WH didn't know it(or didn't care) .. after all .. they can lean on the Blue Dogs when they want .. see ACES
[ Parent ]
No, the white house knew that... (0.00 / 0)
The look of dejection on Obama's face after he was told there would be no bill passed told the whole story...

They leaned on the blue dogs hard... the blue dogs simply didn't want to vote before recess... now, they are reaping their reward...

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

[ Parent ]
and the irony (4.00 / 2)
is it is the blue dogs that will pay the heaviest price.
[ Parent ]
Was it a blunder? (0.00 / 0)

 The blue dogs wanted to sabotage heath-care reform. They didn't "blunder"; they got exactly the result they wanted.

 And Rahm Emanuel wasted his breath berating the progressives.

 The real blunder was Obama naming Rahm as his COS. If you want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt regarding his commitment to real health care reform, that is.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

[ Parent ]
Not so much the protesters (4.00 / 2)
as Spector's response to them. He looked like a bewildered old man, as far from "Snarlin' Arlen" as one could imagine.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
It's the economy, not health care... (4.00 / 2)
...and a (perceived) ineffective stimulus and scary deficits. Setting aside the partisans on both sides, for the independents and passively political 'persuadables' the result is growing concern that 'Obama change' may not be successful, hope is being replaced by fear and that provides a foundation for fear-mongering to take hold.

In this environment, even if they don't believe every 'fear' being propagated, the doubts fuel the "too fast" argument on health care reform and sadly too fast may win out. Even opponents are careful to "say" we need some type of reform while crying that we should slow down. Sadly, in this environment, I doubt the Dems will have the fortitude to push public option health care through on a partisan basis.

Finally, polling is going to continue to be bad until the economy turns. Dem candidates in 2009 elections are screwed. Fortunately, there's a good deal of time between now and November 2010.

Yes, corporate villians needed, but nah gah happen (4.00 / 3)
I agree that for anything good to happen with health care, the pro-reform side needs to demonize the bloodsucking for-profit insurers (and also big Pharma, etc.)

But can you actually envision Obama doing that?  Or the congressional Dem leadership?

They foreclosed that option when they chose the path of bipartisanship and getting buy-in from all the major stakeholders.

That's why we're getting our butts kicked in the political debate, and why they best we can hope for is mealy-mouthed, incremental tweaking of the health-care disaster.

By the way, this is typical of centrist/corporate Democrats' approach to all major issues. That party has no future unless a more left-wing populist wing can emerge within it.

Actually, (4.00 / 2)
I envision myself doing it.

I'll write a letter to the editor of my local paper tomorrow, just in time for my Congressional representative's town hall next Tuesday. Which I will be attending. Without a gun.

If you liked Bush, you'll love McCain

[ Parent ]
May also be (4.00 / 2)
that Specter is dragging down Dems in PA as their representative.  Because in so many ways, he's a terrible standard bearer.

Which is yet another reason he should not be nominated.

Tim Wolfe

Right Wing Protests are a Two-fer (0.00 / 0)
You wrote:

As I argued earlier this week, we want a people vs. the powerful debate on health care, and it seems like we are getting one. Unfortunately, the version we are getting is wingnut protesters versus Democratic politicians, instead of average Americans versus a broken, for-profit health care system.

Insurance companies and wealthy right wingers funding these street protests actually is a brilliant strategy. They make the Dems look bad, give the corporate a media narrative they love (without actually threatening the status quo, as your people vs the powerful would), and co-opt the people vs the powerful narrative by substituting right wing populism (that benefits the wealthy and powerful) with left wing populism (which benefits the middle class and the poor).

Utterly brilliant. I'd love to know if that was the strategy before these protests happened or if they got lucky.

Left wing populism would not work now. The media would have to see large scale riots in the streets before they would cover this story again. The narrative is set.

Populism was there for the taking (4.00 / 1)

 When Obama threw a trillion dollars at Wall Street, he destroyed any chance of the Democrats having any credibility on people-vs-powerful narratives.

  And the Republicans happily stepped into the breach.

  Worrying about annoying David Broder could very well cost the Democrats a generation's worth of elections. What a waste.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

Alot of people have very short memories (0.00 / 0)


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
Sestak's Town Hall Report (0.00 / 0)
.
Rep. Joe Sestak's Town Hall on Healthcare coverage @BooMan and Philly blogs.
Specter Takes Hit From Protests? | 23 comments
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