I'd argue that not enough change was made, but in any case, the administration's and the Democrats' messaging was abysmal over the past two years, as we've been saying for, oh, two years.
How else to explain "death panels," and the odd number of Americans who still think Obama is a Muslim? Yes, the right wing noise machine is good. And the left wing noise machine is ignored (by the Democratic establishment). There are some Democrats who are great at messaging, who routinely get quoted in the media, and who are unusually good at branding their opponents. They're called the Netroots. And the party, the Congress, and the White House give them far too little respect.
PoliticalWire via Peter Daou:
A Bloomberg National Poll finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered.Obama already moved to the middle, and he got branded a Socialist for it. He's a Christian, and people think he's a Muslim. He was born in Hawaii, and they think he's from Kenya. He created or saved between 2 and 4 million jobs, and 94% of the American people either aren't sure, or don't believe it.
The facts: The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters and expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks.
Said pollster Ann Selzer: “The public view of the economy is at odds with the facts, and the blame has to go to the Democrats. It does not matter much if you make change, if you do not communicate change.”
The truth is irrelevant when communication is the problem.
No amount of tweaking the Obama, and Democratic, agenda will make one iota of difference if the party doesn't learn, fast, how to message.
