A Los Angeles Times piece this morning, titled "Democrats feel liberals’ anti-war heat," with the subheading, "Freshman and veteran lawmakers alike risk the ire of bloggers and other activists if they waver on an Iraq exit," contains this interesting piece of goofy analysis:
Some moderate Democrats worry that the pressure being applied by the antiwar left is misguided, arguing that voters want a change of course in Iraq but not a rapid withdrawal.
"Conventional wisdom says that presidential candidates who want to be responsible on this are going to hurt themselves with the angry, impassioned activist left," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank. "But the activist left is out of sync with the American public. Americans don't want to concede this is a total debacle."
How out of touch are we, the "angry, impassioned activist left?" Well, about this much, according to the most recent Gallup poll:
Bush's expected announcement of increased U.S. troop levels in Iraq runs counter to the public's expressed desire. Just 12% of Americans choose an increase in troop levels when presented with four U.S. options for dealing with Iraq, and only 36% say they would favor a Bush proposal that would temporarily increase the number of U.S. troops to stabilize the situation in Iraq.
Apparently, the country is seething with members of the "angry, impassioned activist left." No longer relegated to the fringe, Gallup’s numbers indicate they are everywhere -- everywhere! They are your next-door neighbors. They are your 7/11 clerks, your postal carriers, your PTA presidents, your fellow church attendees. When you stand in a line of three at the grocery store, only one of you wants even a temporary increase in troops to "stabilize the situation in Iraq." Odds are, none of you wants a non-temporary, open-ended troop increase such as the president, by all reports, is going to announce tonight.
Yet Mr. Marshall insists to a Los Angeles Times reporter that those who oppose Bush’s plan are "out of sync with the American public."
This thinking is common in beltway circles, where pundits and pompous think tankers serve as pilot fish to officials anointed by election. Reading statements like Mr. Marshall’s, one would think prior to the creation of the internet, there were two types of Americans: those tiny minority of elites who are elected to office and those who put them there – the vast, unwashed masses of voters. With the creation of the web, though, a whole new class was created out of absolutely nothing – bloggers, otherwise known as "angry, impassioned activists." We are not elected, and apparently to the likes of Mr. Marshall, we don’t qualify as normal citizens who do the electing. We were created whole-cloth out of bits and bytes, borgs spawned out of some cyber matrix.
Here’s a wake-up call: We are the public, Mr. Marshall. Read the freakin’ polls and then peruse some every-day blogging posts. It’s obviously too late in the game for the president to benefit from this advice, but as a representative of the majority of the American public, I’ll offer it to you in his stead: Pull your head out of your "centrist Democratic think tank," take a deep breath of non-beltway air and deal with the reality that we are the public, before you go the way of pterodactyls and dodo birds.
Update by kos: For those who might not know, the Progressive Policy Institute is part of the DLC.