Sometimes the premise of an article is just all wrong. Like this from Monday's New York Times (see bold):

As Republicans See a Mandate on Budget Cuts, Others See Risk

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON -- In Congress and in statehouses, Republican lawmakers and governors are claiming a broad mandate from last year’s elections as they embark on an aggressive campaign of cutting government spending and taking on public unions. Their agenda echoes in its ambition what President Obama and Democrats tried after winning office in their own electoral wave in 2008.

They're talking particularly about the battle in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers under the guise of budget cutting and fiscal discipline. What comparable steps did Democrats take after 2008? End the Afghan War? No, they dramatically escalated it. Push for the Employee Free Choice Act in order to help bolster the ranks of the labor movement? Nope. Enact aggressive, far-reaching Wall Street reform in order to take advantage of widespread public outrage? Nope. Massive jobs program to counter horrendous unemployment? No. There were few signs that the Democratic leaders and the White House ever much considered such steps. Healthcare is the only legislative item that might make sense here--a bill that, in many respects, borrowed from Republican Mitt Romney's plan in Massachusetts.

The point of these articles is to warn about partisan "overreach," the need for bipartisanship, and so on. But they often have to start with a false premise--that the major parties behave in the same way, playing to their respective bases. They do not.

New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney has a long piece (10/29/10) about California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate. Both are expected to lose on Tuesday, which leaves Nagourney wondering why women aren't more eager to support female politicians. The piece poses a lot of big questions--the fact that both are struggling "raising questions about money, gender and Americans' views of candidates who come out of corporate boardrooms." It is surprising that they are trailing Democrats who are "symbols of liberal policies and nearly as old as talking pictures."

Nagourney gets to gender:

And all this flows into the question of gender. California, of all states, has shown little reluctance to vote for women: Both of its senators are women, Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Democratic primary for president here in 2008 and this is the state that sends Nancy Pelosi to Congress.

So why not Whitman and Fiorina, then?  We're told that they exemplify "this new breed of tough female corporate executives looking to shift into public office. This has not always proved to be the best pedigree for a male candidate, and some pollsters and analysts suggested, that it might prove even more complicated for a woman as gender roles continued to evolve."

In the last paragraph, Nagourney finally arrives at the most logical conclusion: Women tend to support Democratic politicians, and perhaps even more so in California, a Democratic-leaning state:

And in a state that might have pioneered the notion of identity politics, these races show that women are the last voters that Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina should be counting on. Women here are much more likely to vote ideology and issues than gender. In Thursday's poll, the last Field Poll that will be done before the election, Mr. Brown led Ms. Whitman among women by 51 percent to 35 percent.

In other words, women vote on the issues, and these candidates--who happen to be women--don't support the kinds of policies most women support. So, yeah, it's kind of a mystery why they're not ahead in the polls.

The headline and lead of a New York Times piece today:

Trick for Democrats Is Juggling Ideology and Pragmatism
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON -- Democrats have displayed a striking degree of pragmatism in seeking to push the health care bill through Congress, embracing or rejecting ideological considerations as needed to keep the legislation moving.

By "ideology," the Times means policy ideas that are popular with voters and that would be more likely to reduce the costs of the healthcare system and cover more people (single-payer, a truly robust public plan). By "pragmatism," they mean the things that are less likely to reduce costs, or the trade-offs Democratic leaders have made in an attempt to win conservative support (excluding coverage for abortion services, for example). The choice of such language is intended to send a political message about what policy ideas are wise, and which are not--based on ideology, not pragmatism.