What was the lesson of the 2010 election? Since the election conservatives and the DC opinion elite have been claiming that the public voted for budget cuts. But before the election they ran ad after ad saying Dems cut your Medicare and didn't provide jobs. Now every single poll shows that the public wants jobs not cuts.
Politico today has one more typical Washington Elite journalism story. Their story, Govs face budget blowback, begins,
"It was supposed to be one of the clearest messages of the 2010 elections: Voters were finally fed up with government spending."
Politico begins their story with one more example of the gap between the DC Elite and the rest of the country. In the rest of the country we remember that the Republican campaign theme against Democrats was that Democrats were responsible for "Half A Trillion In Cuts To Medicare".
Who can forget that? Ad after ad after ad after ad after ad blasted out from the TV saying Rep. So-and-so "cut $500 billion from Medicare" and many of those ads also blasted the Democrat because there was no cost-of-living adjustment to Social Security last year. That is just a fact, the Republicans campaigned against cuts.
Here are just a few of the ad barrage Republicans ran before the election:
And voters were sent flyers like this: (click for larger)
There's a feature piece in Politico today that perfectly captures the assumptions most national political reporters, especially at certain publications, bring to the core questions of budgetary politics. The gist of the piece is that 'we' all agree that the message of the 2010 election was that the public has decided that government is too big and wants dramatic budget cuts. But now it seems like the governors who are really going whole hog on this -- overwhelming Republicans -- are getting really unpopular. Ergo, the public isn't really ready for the "grown-up conversation" about budgets than it seemed they might be.
The public wanted jobs before the election, voted for jobs, wants jobs, needs jobs, demands jobs. End of story.
On April 4: We Are One
On April 4, millions of people will come together for the "We Are One" series of community and workplace actions.
"On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to stand with sanitation workers demanding their dream: The right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a better life. The workers were trying to form a union with AFSCME."
Find local events in your area here.
"Join us to make April 4, 2011, and the days surrounding it, a day to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states where corporate-bought politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for."
