Conservative media lies again

No big surprise. There's a splashy headline and then other assorted (and sordid) lies. This time it's the Washington Examiner. Here's the headline:

Details on Bill Clinton's ride on pedophile's 'Lolita Express' sought

Here's another probable lie:

According to news reports, the former president took several flights on the jet to the Epstein's island, and at least on one was accompanied by "4 secret service," according to a flight logbook first reported on by Gawker.com.

Amazingly, there's actually a link to a different story, this time at Gawker. However, the Gawker story makes no claims that Bill Clinton flew to Epstein's island. Instead, the plane was used on a "week-long anti-poverty and anti-AIDS tour of Africa." More important is the link from the Gawker article to actual flight logs.

If you check out the flight logs, as I did and the reporters at Gawker did, you don't find anything about Clinton going to some private island--only airports like those in Hong Kong, Portugal, Mozambique, Miami, and White Plains. So it looks like the Washington Examiner claimed something for which it had absolutely no evidence--in other words, THEY LIED. Well, surprise, surprise. I'll put this in the vault next to the conservative media lying about Shirley Sherrod, where Obama was born, and the millions of other lies they disseminate like plague.

Image: gawker.com

Update 7/9/16. This isn't about the Epstein Lolita Perv Island lie, but a new, different lie. As usual, I read about the issue in a throw-away comment from a conservative troll. Supposedly, a gun that was run down to Mexico in the Fast and Furious scandal was used in the Paris massacres. Except that the source information doesn't say that at all. One of the guns used in Paris was traced to a dealer in Phoenix who might have been involved in Fast and Furious though there is no direct evidence that this is true. Well, the conservative lie machine can't let that stop them, can they? Of course not.

Update 12/29/17. The Washington Examiner, that rag that pretends it's a news site, had an editorial about accuracy in reporting. Hahahahaha. Unfortunately, no comment thread where I can blast them.

Update 7/9/19. Jeffery Epstein is now facing the charges on trafficking underage girls. Bill Clinton hasn't been named in charges and neither has Trump. However, speculation abounds. The Miami Herald has been following it most closely, but there's this interesting piece from Vanity Fair. And a brilliant takedown of one of the prosecutors lame explanations. How to stop the spin cold!

Update 7/13/19. Many connected to the case and the sweetheart deal are now under scrutiny.

I've had the link to the flight logs in the post forever. I've checked where Clinton went, and it wasn't St. Thomas or the Virgin Islands. The airport code there is TIST, which is important to know. 

Grand political strategies of our times

Hat tip to commenter Anastasios for this topic. He wrote:

The GOP thinks that they are well-entrenched in the House and time will eventually bring them back into power with a well-timed recession or a major Dem mistake... The Dems acknowledge the mid-term danger but believe the GOP is slowly being throttled to death by demographic and social change, and that by about 2030 the left will have grown strong enough that the dreams of conservatives will be forever dead... In any case, neither side is trying to get things done, but to set agendas for when their expected futures come about. Whatever happens with the sequester and the budget is merely a blip in the sweep of the longer-term strategies they are pursuing... At this point I don't think either party finds it in their interest to minimize problems. [Emphasis added by MP.]

I don't know whose agenda the future will favor, but his point spurred me to think about grand political strategies of the recent past.

 The Permanent Republican Majority

Back in 2001, or even earlier, Karl Rove envisioned a permanent Republican majority. That wasn't so long ago, but I still had to remind myself how it was supposed to come about. In a nutshell, the GOP would build a coalition of reliable, motivated supporters who would vote in larger percentages than the general public. This coalition was conservative (social, fiscal, and foreign policy) with pro-business and evangelicals being in the forefront.

Rove was very solicitous of the concerns of evangelical and conservative groups. But he also needed to make sure that the GOP blind-sided by bread-and-butter concerns, so education and Medicare were also on the radar. I recall reading the Medicare Part D came about because Rove didn't want the Dems to have the lack of medication coverage as an issue.

Of course this dream didn't survive the debacle of the Iraq war, with all lives lost, money borrowed and wasted, and arrogance that it was going well. The dream, already dead, was killed even deader by the financial crisis of 2008. No wonder I had to research to remind myself how 'the permanent Republican majority' was supposed to work.

The Obama plan?

This is much more speculative (meaning I have no data to help me determine either way), but perhaps Obama has a similar plan for a permanent Dem majority. The Dems tend to be favored when turnout is high, which means that they gain the most from turning irregular voters or non-voters into regular voters. Obama's 50 state strategy and local campaign offices that stay open and active through the off-years are aimed at this pool of irregular voters. I think the major drives to sign people up for food stamps and Medicaid also aim to turn irregular voters into regular voters.

If Dems can keep these voters coming to the polls, and sign up even more, they will have an electoral advantage. There's little the GOP is doing to woo these voters away, and they don't have an equivalent pool to tap. Lots of people think the GOP is screwed. So it would seem unless the Dems revert to being their own worst enemies through overreach.

Triangulation

I can't end this reflection without mentioning the Clinton strategy of triangulation. Under this strategy, Clinton negotiated a successful reform of welfare. He also avoided the fate of many old-line Democrats (turned out of office in 1994), and won reelection in 1996. Though it wasn't a 'grand' strategy, it worked well for Bill Clinton. Hillary wasn't so lucky or adept, and the Dems gave the nomination in 2008 to someone friendlier to the traditional left.

Successful planning

I notice that political strategies don't have as long a shelf-life as their supporters hope. I also notice that I can talk about strategies without talking about principles or deeply held values. Of course, deeply held values probably don't have a long shelf-life either as political strategy, or a successful strategy at least.

Deja vu

Image: amazon.com

The absence of coherent Obama criticism

I spend way too much time reading politics on the internet, but it certainly has broadened my thinking. I especially like the comments since there are a wider range of ideas, some wonderfully unfiltered. There are trolls too, but I occasional learn something from them.

One commenter was complaining that there are no Dems criticizing Obama from the right. That's a good point. Where are the Dems who are urging Obama to be more conservative, particularly more fiscally conservative?

I tried to remember any, and I couldn't. So I called my friend Google, who provided only one on-topic link to Dems criticizing Obama, though it's possible that both Google and I overlooked some. Here is the criticism, dating from April 2011:

The push-back has come in recent days from Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) ... and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)... Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told constituents during the Easter recess that he would not vote to lift the debt limit without a "real and meaningful commitment to debt reduction."

Perhaps the deal of August 2011 blunted most of the criticism. It's also likely there are fewer moderate and conservative Democrats to apply the pressure. Kent Conrad chose not to run for reelection in 2012, but Joe Manchin and Mark Pryor are still in the Senate. Maybe the Dems have circled the wagons. That would make sense, especially in an election year, if you can get your sprawling party to do it.

Well, something is lost when there isn't criticism from the center. One trollish commenter pointed out that Bill Clinton "should have been criticizing Obama as an irresponsible big spender." You know, I find this believable, especially if it is softened somewhat. I can imagine Clinton thinking that we need to trim some of the federal safety net programs, encouraging people to be more independent, and states to experiment with ways to save money on Medicaid and similar programs. Obama has done the opposite, pushing food stamp and Medicaid sign-ups. (Bush had a program to encourage food stamp sign-ups too.)

So why isn't there more criticism of Obama from the center, or from the right side of the Democratic party? I don't know, but maybe the reasonable criticism was and is drowned out by the over-the-top criticism from outside the party. For example, Gingrich called Obama "the food stamp president," which has unpalatable racial tinges. Others who call Obama "a muslim, ...liar, a socialist, an idiot, a communist, the anti-christ,... evil (list courtesy Google auto-completion) do more damage to themselves and the GOP than to Obama.

Even Romney, who tried to be non-crazy in his charges, couldn't make criticism stick. I think there's a lesson here. You have to be credible in your criticism and not overreach, or you bring doubt onto your whole message. You can't say that Obama has ruined the economy, or it's all his fault the recovery is so weak, without a strong argument to support it. The majority just didn't believe it, and the GOP looked partisan, foolish, and dishonest.

Come on, let's have better quality in Obama criticism. We need it.

Image: teapartytribune.com

Top gaffes of the Democratic convention

For Democrats, it was a pretty well organized convention without too many socialistic promises made. So it was an improvement on the last big platform event, the State of the Union speech. The Dems embarrassed themselves in small ways, but not in big ways. (Much better than Obama's last big speech, the SOTU.)

• The "Government is the only thing we all belong too" video. This isn't a good sentiment when trust in government is low, as it is now. Obama campaign is distancing itself. See good critiques at HotAir and Reason.
• Nixing the stadium. This looks like over-reach, trying to fill a stadium again, and then canceling it for weather concerns. This is a problem with its roots in his 2008 acceptance speech. Just as well to bite the bullet this time and go back to a normal venue. No campaign should repeat the stadium thing.
• Floor vote for putting God and Jerusalem back in the platform. Poor optics on the part of the platform committee, poorly handled on the convention floor. They didn't send out enough memos or email, obviously, so the voice vote didn't go as it should. Many pundits/blogs thought this was the worst gaffe of the convention, but I don't think there will be much mileage out of a perfunctory mention of God and Jerusalem. They're just not the major issues in the campaign or important wedge issues. (By the way, what are the wedge issues?)
• Bill Clinton gave a great speech, but did you know he's a serial rapist? I'm seeing this charge frequently just in time for the DNC. (However, Ann Coulter was years ahead of the meme.) I'm following this rule for political decisions -- no disqualifications due to sexual misdeeds. The moral outrage is never applied consistently. People excuse and forgive on their side, but try to run those on other side out of government and out of town. I'm tired of the hypocrisy, and I don't want to narrow the choice of candidates to only those who are strictly faithful in their marriage vows. This pass doesn't extend to harassing or fooling around with minors. That's still verboten.
• I guess Biden disappointed those counting on him to gaffe.
• The Blaze found a delegate who said "Romney will destroy this country completely." If she were to meet him, she wants to kill him. Substitute 'Obama' for 'Romney' and you have a typical Tea Party interview or right-wing comment on a news blog. Yawn. Does this register on anyone's outrage meter anymore?
• Breitbart.com's pick for best and worst.

The Dems didn't even come close to crippling themselves, so this counts as a good convention. The Dems still have plenty of time to screw up, and the GOP often counts on this happening. By staying on message, the Dems are making the GOP work for a win this time instead of just handing it to them.

 Dem equivalent of Tea Party crazy

Image: theblaze.com

Campaign Theme: Competence

I think I spot a major theme for the presidential campaign: it's all about 'competence.' Specifically, Romney is competent. He knows how an economy works, he knows how to create jobs. He was a competent business manager who made himself rich with good business sense. Obama is incompetent, hasn't ever worked outside the liberal bubble of academia, social programs, and government, and has no instinct for what to do to turn around the economy.

In my opinion, this is a bunch of opportunistic crud. If Romney is so sure his program can create jobs, he should be touting the program non-stop. However, his program, when you look at it, has a strong resemblance to Bush's program, and we all know how well that worked. So Romney has to focus on the meta-message (Obama is incompetent in economics) while avoiding a real message (here's my economic plan).

The Dems have perhaps started to get into this vibe too. Dems are asking, who accomplished more, Clinton or Obama? They're mostly saying it's Obama. I think this is a meta-message too: Obama will be like Clinton, as opposed to being like Carter. After a catastrophic midterm election, he'll bounce back, win re-election, and effectively govern for 4 more years.

The bad news for Dems is that Obama is not Bill Clinton. Clinton had a warmer personality and could connect with more moderate, middle-Americans. Obama has more appeal to the well-educated, but weak rapport with blue collar voters. The good news for Dems is that, unlike Carter, Obama is running against Romney, not Reagan. We don't know yet whether Obama will suffer Carter's fate or Clinton's.

As to the question of competence, I think it's reasonable to talk about it. Carter was an incompetent leader. Reagan was a very competent one. Obama is somewhere in between. We can't judge yet with Romney. So how will we make a decision? Best to use criteria other than competence, like WHAT ARE THEIR DAMN PLANS????

Image: amazon.com

The Usurpers: Bill Clinton

I published a thesis that many conservatives just can't stand for a Democrat (or any Democrat to the left of George Wallace) to be elected to the presidency. This is a problem because the constitution isn't set up to bar Democrats, in fact far from it.

From my memory and observation of political history, this irrational hatred of Dem presidents started with Clinton. But why him? There isn't going to be a scientific answer, so you can agree or disagree with my speculation, and that's fine because there won't ever be proof either way.

 Coming up: Speculation

Here's what I think: Clinton was treated this way because he was seen as a traitor or a turncoat. He was born into lower-class Southern society. So far, it's good, but then he went to Yale (worrisome), and married a northern liberal (huge red flag). I don't think the draft-dodging and marijuana non-inhaling really mattered because both were  common among the campus conservatives too. So Hillary was the first problem.

Then was the reform of the military policy to hunt and discharge homosexuals (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). Clinton showed he was going to be gay-friendly. He was already seen as black-friendly. The health care reform commission showed more willingness to pursue a liberal agenda.

This was deeply dangerous to the GOP, because if he was successful in reforming our awful healthcare system, he could earn for the Democrats the loyalty of a lot of Americans for another generation, just as FDR had done with the New Deal and just as the Great Society had. The Republicans were overwhelmingly successful with their messaging, and Clinton was stopped flat. However, the GOP didn't let up after this victory, They kept on for the rest of his two terms as President and continued smearing Hillary (as a senator) after that.

Why did the attacks continue unabated? It wasn't because he was trying to enact a liberal agenda because there wasn't a let-up during or after welfare reform. It didn't let up when Bill was at the end of his second term. So why?

Speculation and Pop Psychoanalysis

The only reason I can think of is that certain groups think they should have electoral hegemony, they were frustrated in this desire, and their revenge was endless attacks.

Which groups might have developed this sense of ownership? Groups that have had many decades of unbroken power.Two groups fit this description: southern conservative whites and northern liberals, and perhaps add in western and mid-western conservatives.

So now we are basically caught in the crossfire between two entitled political groups: southern/western conservatives and northern liberals. They are both conditioned to getting what they want, they throw the hugest tantrums, pull non-stop dirty tricks, and may blow up the political system if they don't get what they want. The Dems have been tamed a little, by none other than the Clintons, but no one has tamed those entitled conservatives.

I hope for a repudiation to both groups, but that didn't happen in '06 or '08, or '10. It doesn't look likely to happen in '12. I hope this country isn't stuck in an either/or rut, where the choice is crappy conservatives or crappy liberals. I don't know when I'll give up hope for some sanity and moderation. Not yet, but it's getting closer. God help us all.

Graphic: freerepublic.com

Extras: Conservatives explain (or rationalize) why they hated Clinton. An idiosyncratic scorecard of presidents.

Elizabeth Warren's stupid lies

I'm happy to shed light on local issues that may have national interest, like Romneycare, but I wish our Senate race wasn't one of them. Besides, being local doesn't make this issue look much different, except compared to a locality, say Texas, where an old-line liberal like Elizabeth Warren would never have a chance at a Senate seat.

The story swirling around her, that she parlayed a family story that she's 1/32 Cherokee into a professorship at Harvard Law, reeks of liberal privilege and hypocrisy to those that have a sensitive nose for that kind of stuff. I'm a little more understanding because my family has its stories too--that the unusual shape of my eyes (and my son's eyes) came from a Cossack raping a woman ancestor, probably in Ukraine. Lovely story, isn't it? So I'm attuned to family lore as lore, not as a lie used for advancement.

Story or Non-Story?

However, to others it stinks of the special favors that the liberal diversity police hand out to minorities and those white liberals who'll talk the diversity jive and even lie to claim some of the spoils for themselves. So if you're a libertarian or conservative partisan, you may love this story.

Me, I hate this story. It's a reminder of a dirty little secret in academia (which is my background), that it's hard to tell which professors are great because there's too much hype about too many of them; most of it undeserved; and all of it deeply envied by professors not benefiting from false hype. I grew up in this hot house world, and happily escaped it for industry at the first possible moment. So this has been a regrettable reminder of that world. (To be fair, it's often hard to tell which executives are good, and which only middling, which employee should get the promotion, which candidate should get the nomination, etc. So this problem isn't just a problem in academia.)

Those Little Lies

This story is also a reminder of how stupid little lies can cost you. Warren should have said that Harvard was (or might be) calling her a Native American right after she talked nationally about having a little Cherokee blood. Instead, she let the doubts surface and grow, whatever those doubts are.

So what are those doubts? That Elizabeth Warren isn't qualified for her position? She has quite a resume, especially work on consumer credit and bankruptcy law. So she herself has provided the easiest ammunition to use against her, distracting from her qualifications.

It reminds me how Bill Clinton gave the Republicans their best ammunition when he got that blow job from Monica Lewinsky. No blow job, no year long distraction, no impeachment. Ms. Warren, please come clean faster, don't fight it, and don't hand anymore noisy stories to the GOP. Hopefully you and Scott Brown can get back to the issues, please!

What's really behind this plain face?

Photo: salon.com

The Usurpers

The cry "Take back our country" is one I heard frequently from tea partiers. The sense is that some elected officials are illegitimate usurpers of their office. The implied meaning in 'take back our country' is usually electoral, but violence, as in a 'second amendment solution,' lurks in the background.

The idea that elected officiasl are not legitimate holders of their elected office can come from concerns about the fairness of the election or about the officials themselves. It's often mixed up in the believers' heads. Obama was elected by fraud, he's not a natural-born American, or (more likely) no one with his political philosophy should ever be elected, in these people's minds.

 Graphic: xark.typedpad.com

So Obama is treated like a usurper. But Clinton was also treated like a usurper, and there's no doubt that he was a natural-born American. I think the concerns about fraud and Obama's citizenship are just smokescreens for the real reason people don't want him as president--that they don't want someone with his politics in the White House. Therefore, any Democratic president is going to get this treatment--the constant complaints, the attacks on his legitimacy, the insults like "traitor," and the calls for impeachment.

Clinton got it too, and it was surprising in its virulence at the time. Hillary called it a "vast rightwing conspiracy," but it actually became normal operating procedure for Clinton's GOP opponents. The machinery hasn't ever stopped. Now Obama is the target, along with his senior staff, particularly Eric Holder for some reason.

Bear in mind that there can easily be an unending series of complaints about any official since none of us is perfect or all-powerful or able to accomplish every single thing within our purview. I think the Obama administration has been relatively clean, which is why Operation Fast and Furious is still such an item of anger for the right. It's the biggest club with which to beat the administration, and it isn't that big (in my opinion), especially since it began under President Bush in 2006.

I wonder about this sense that any Democratic president is a usurper. It can feel that the president doesn't have much support if you live in a deep-red state or receive your political information in a partisan echo chamber. Many people, on the right, left, or middle, think that they are actually in the majority, or would be if only:

• The media wasn't so biased.
• The media would get the truth out.
• Voting fraud was eliminated.
• Stupid voters weren't allowed to vote.
• Freeloaders weren't allowed to vote.
• Immigration laws were enforced. 

The belief that your ideas are superior and would win an electoral majority if only [something] is common enough. I just don't know why it persists in the face of election results. Why is there the sense that you are part of the "silent majority" (Nixon) or the real Americans (Palin), and those others are not?

The echo chamber of media and the people around you can certainly reinforce that idea, and Fox News and other right-wing outlets do plenty of conscious reinforcement. But I think there's more. There's a kind of resentment at work. It's resentment of elites, particularly in non-conservative media and in academia, who have used their power to stifle. Many people fell stifled, belittled, and embattled. It's no wonder they want to take the country back. That's how anyone feels when they're shouted down, or just perceives that kind of treatment. So they turn their resentment on these elites and their allies, the Democrats.

I don't have a quick solution to this. But I want to remind people that civil discourse and true listening are lacking, and we see the outcome in this situation and probably thousands of others.

Not a bullseye for this topic, but a great graphic 

from rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/tag/paul-street

Extras:
Type "most Americans want" into Google to see what phrases come up in auto-complete.

Please excuse typos in this post. Blogger lost it and I had to retype it from the preview page in the Firefox history. Freak accident, but only electrons were harmed.

Reflections on partisanship

Partisanship is more the norm, but bipartisanship also has a robust history. I was asking myself the question: is it really worse now than it was in the past? Yes, I think so. In the past 3 years, Congress has negotiated virtually no bills. A few measures have been so popular that they passed easily, most recently a jobs bill for veterans, but that it isn't the hard work of negotiating a compromise. All the compromises in the past year have occurred as time ticked down to a shutdown or a hard expiration date.

A welfare reform bill or education bill worked on by both Bush and Kennedy would be unthinkable today. There had been camaraderie among senators in past years, but not now.

Not So Small Beginnings

I tried to think back to when this nearly constant animosity started, and I think it was during Reagan presidency. There won't be any proof of this, but I think there was a near constant barrage of disagreement and belittling critique of the man, his intelligence, and his policies. It wasn't surprising, because Reagan was an existential threat to the liberal-leaning status quo. He wanted to roll back a scary number of the gains liberal had made: welfare, abortion, tax-free student loans, decreased military spending, women's liberation.

One of the most blatant of the liberals' attacks was on Robert Bork, Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court. Republican neither forgave or forgot, and Supreme Court nominations have been generally been contentious ever since. (To be clear, I agreed with the fight against Bork. He was a frighteningly persuasive reactionary, and I don't use those terms lightly.)

 "I'll see you and raise you five."

This form of partisanship, with constant attacks, became even more pronounced during the Clinton administration. The tools--congregational hearings, constant news leaks, rumors, special prosecutors (blessedly defunct now)--had all been used before by Democrats out to embarrass a Republican administration. Perhaps the Republicans added a few new tricks, such as finding PACs or think-tanks that would  financially sponsor accusers on press junkets (though it's possible that wasn't a new twist).

The Republicans really upped the ante with their impeachment proceeding against Bill Clinton. Even a strong electoral repudiation of the Republicans didn't deter the House Republican leadership, who commenced impeachment proceeding after losing a significant number of seats in the 1998 off-year election. Since then, the partisanship has barely had even a Christmas truce, except perhaps Gore's altruistic concession of the disputed 2000 presidential election. Each president has been accused so often of being "the most polarizing figure ever" that it could be a title equivalent with 'Mr. President.' I'm so tired and cynical about all this partisanship that I don't want to chronicle any more of it in this post. Suffice to say that it continues unabated.

I don't have a hopeful note to end on. No pithy quip. I still pray for an end to this partisanship, but without any spirit of hopefulness. Sorry to be such a downer.

 ... just another day at the beach

Extras
Google counts:

• "Impeach Carter"   - 5140 results, none contemporaneous.
• "Impeach Reagan" - 10,700 results
• "Impeach Clinton"  - 62,900 results
• "Impeach Bush"       - 2.2 million results
• "Impeach Obama"  - 1.0 million results

Supreme partisan Jon Kyl

The Usurpers

The cry "We're going to take back our country" is one I heard frequently from tea partiers. The sense is that some (usually specified) elected officials are illegitimate usurpers of that office. The implied meaning in  'take back the country' is usually electoral, but violence, or a second amendment solution, lurks in the background

The idea that elected officials are not illegitimate holders of their elected office can come from concerns about the fairness of the election or about the officials themselves. It's often mixed up in the believers' heads. Obama was elected by fraud, he's also not a natural-born American, and no one with his political philosophy should ever be elected.

Graphic:xark.typepad.com

So Obama is treated like a usurper. But Clinton was also treated like a usurper, and there's no doubt that he was a natural-born American. I think the concerns about fraud and Obama's citizenship are just smokescreens for the real reason people don't want him as president--that they don't want someone with his politics in the White House. Therefore, any Democratic president is going to get this treatment--the constant complaints, the attacks on his legitimacy, the insults like "traitor," and the calls to impeach.

Clinton got it too, and it was surprising in its virulence at the time. Hillary called it a "vast rightwing conspiracy," but it actually became normal operating procedure for Clinton's GOP opponents, and the machinery hasn't ever stopped. Now Obama is the target, along with his senior staff, particularly Eric Holder for some reason.

Bear in mind that here can easily be an unending series of complaints about any official since none of us is perfect or all-powerful or able to accomplish everything within our purview. I think the Obama administration has been relatively clean, which is why Operation Fast and Furious is still such an item of anger. It's the biggest club with which to beat the Obama administration, and it isn't that big (in my subjective opinion), especially since it began under President Bush in 2006.

I wonder about this sense that any Democratic president is a usurper. It can feel that the president doesn't have much support if you live in a deep-red state or receive your political information in a partisan echo chamber. Many people, on the right, left, and middle, thin that they are actually in the majority if only:

• The media wasn't so biased.
• The media would get the truth out there.
• Voting fraud was eliminated.
• Stupid voters weren't allowed to vote.
• Freeloaders weren't allowed to vote.
• Immigration laws were enforced.

The belief that your ideas are superior and would win a electorate majority if only [something] is common enough. I just don't know why it persists in the face of election results. Why is there the sense that you are part of the "silent majority" (Nixon) or the real Americans (Palin), and those others are not?

The echo chamber of media and the politics of the people around you with can certainly reinforce that idea, and Fox News and other right-wing outlets do plenty of conscious reinforcement. But I think there's more. There's a kind of resentment at work. It's resentment of elites, particularly in non-conservative media and in academia, who have used their power to stifle. Many people feel stifled, belittled, and embattled. It's no wonder they want to take their country back. That's how anyone feels when they're shouted down, or just perceive that kind of treatment. So they turn their resentment on these elites and their allies, the Democrats.

I don't have a quick solution to this. But I want to remind people that civil discourse and true listening are lacking, and we see the outcome of this situation and probably thousands of others.

  Not a bull's eye for the topic, but a great graphic for 

"take our country back" from rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/tag/paul-street/

Extras:
Type "most Americans want" into Google to see what phrases come up in auto-complete.