A particularly smart take (smarter, at least, than the nonsense over the past year fed by Fox) on the current electoral mood is developing in the media as summer winds down. I especially liked this weekend piece in the Washington Post about VA-05:
"People are really smart," said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. "They know the economic collapse happened before Obama. They hold lots of people responsible, and they're realistic enough to know you can't change things overnight. People are more angry at Washington being broken, and the wrong people being helped."
Peter Hart, another Democratic pollster, agreed. "All they see is they're being left out of the process," he said.
Voters get the part about "Bush sucks". They get the part about the GOP being out of ideas. But they also get the part about Wall Street getting a more sympathetic ear than Main Street. That's the consequence of catfood commissions, dawdling on unemployment benefits, and pretending jobs don't matter as much as the deficit. That latter includes Blue Dogs, so don't blame it all on the GOP (even though much of it is them.)
Voters are results oriented, and the economic results right now are not pretty, regardless of whatever steps are being made to fix things in the future. Speaking of the future, the question on the table is "will that future include me?" If people are uncertain whether your plans include them, why would they vote for you?
Anyone running for office ought to keep that thought front and center.