{"id":3227,"date":"2004-12-17T13:01:51","date_gmt":"2004-12-17T18:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3227.html"},"modified":"2004-12-17T13:01:51","modified_gmt":"2004-12-17T18:01:51","slug":"names-that-should-be-scary-but-dont-even-sound-familiar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/names-that-should-be-scary-but-dont-even-sound-familiar\/","title":{"rendered":"Names that should be scary, but don’t even sound familiar"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest NBC\/Wall Street Journal poll<\/a> has plenty of interesting data, including general disapproval of Bush’s plans to phase-out Social Security and rewrite the federal tax code. But I was struck by some of the internal numbers that haven’t generated a lot of attention yet.<\/p>\n

The poll<\/a> (.pdf) asked respondents’ opinions of several key national figures, including Bush, Cheney, Kerry, and Edwards. But some of the most prominent names for discussion in progressive circles are largely unknown to the public.<\/p>\n

For example, asked for their opinions on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, 12% had a positive opinion of him, 17% had a negative opinion, but 45% hadn’t heard of him. I suspect that last number is actually larger since an additional 26% claimed to be “neutral” about DeLay, which is largely impossible for anyone who actually knows who is.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when asked for their thoughts on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 16% said they had a positive opinion of him, 12% said negative, 20% were neutral, and 52% had no idea who the man is.<\/p>\n

The NBC\/WSJ poll didn’t even ask about House Speaker Dennis Hastert or Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but I suspect the “never heard of” rate would have been at least as high as the numbers for DeLay and Scalia, if not higher.<\/p>\n

It creates a unique political problem: How do progressives highlight the dangers of a far-right agenda is Americans don’t recognize the far-right’s most prominent leaders?
\n
\nThe right has its bogeymen, whom they highlight every election cycle. Vote for Candidate X, we’re told, and voters will have another Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton, both of whom are widely recognized by the public. But what good does it do the DCCC to say, “Candidate Z will go to Congress and vote like Tom DeLay and support judges like Antonin Scalia,” if voters don’t even know who these people are?<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is widespread ignorance. When John Kerry would bemoan “Benedict Arnold corporations<\/a>” who take government tax breaks to ship jobs overseas, the analogy only works if the listener knows who Benedict Arnold is, which in many cases, wasn’t the case. <\/p>\n

Likewise, Dems would note that Bush’s record on job creation was the worst of any president since Herbert Hoover. This lost a little punch, however, when surveys showed<\/a> most voters had no idea who Herbert Hoover was. (12% confused him with former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, 3% lauded him for creating a fine vacuum cleaner, and 4% associated him with building a big dam. No, I’m not kidding.)<\/p>\n

But the other part if it is encouraging Dems to demonize characters like DeLay more than they’ve been doing. The country is hardly so conservative that it can’t reject far-right leaders who’ve gone off the deep end. Newt Gingrich, for example, was widely hated in the mid-90s and his unpopularity helped drive Dem gains in the 1998 mid-terms. Yet for all his many faults, Gingrich was gracious and accommodating compared to DeLay.<\/p>\n

There’s no reason voters who hesitate to vote for Dems because they think Ted Kennedy is too liberal shouldn’t pause before voting for a Tom DeLay-style Republican. We’ll just have to do more to tell people who DeLay is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest NBC\/Wall Street Journal poll has plenty of interesting data, including general disapproval of Bush’s plans to phase-out Social Security and rewrite the federal tax code. But I was struck by some of the internal numbers that haven’t generated a lot of attention yet. The poll (.pdf) asked respondents’ opinions of several key national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}