Every once in a while, it's worth taking a step back and reminding ourselves that Sean Hannity isn't just a Republican partisan hack, he's also a dumb partisan hack. A very, very dumb hack.
Case in point: on Wednesday night, he attacked the ABC News/Washington Post poll that showed 57% support for the public option.
Hannity's argument? Roll the tape:
Transcript:
With the exception of Fox News, the other networks, they’re receiving gold stars on their White House report cards, and the latest case in point is the Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows that 57% of Americans support a government health care takeover and only 40% oppose it.
Now a closer look at that poll explains why. Now get this: They polled 13% more Democrats than Republicans. Now that explains a few things.
Let's leave aside the fact that Hannity inaccurately claimed this was a poll on a "government takeover" of health care. It was a poll on the public option.
With that out of the way, Hannity's core complaint is that the poll is biased because it had more Democrats in it than Republicans. Apparently the fact that there are more Democrats than Republicans is completely lost on him.
The fact that there were more Democrats than Republicans in that poll is a reflection of reality. In recent polls, Republicans have averaged 21% of the electorate, and Democrats have averaged 33%. In this poll, Democrats were at 33% and Republicans were at 20%.
But let's say we practiced Hannity's idea of "fair & balanced" and weighted Democrats, Republicans, and independents equally in the poll. If we did that, there would be 53% support for the public option (the simple average of support by party, which is 77% of Dems, 57% of independents, and 26% of GOPers).
Hannity might have realized just how stupid his criticism was if he'd paid attention to the simple fact that he was whining about a 13-point gap between Dems and Republicans in a poll showing the public option ahead by 17 points. But no such good fortune for Hannity. Instead, he grasped for straws, and made a stupid case against a good poll. Even dumber yet, he made a stupid case which, even if you accepted its core premise, still would have shown solid majority support for the public option.
With political opponents as stupid as Sean Hannity, who needs allies?