Today in the New York Times Paul Krugman (1/10/11) suggests that we not pretend that "both sides" are responsible for toxic political rhetoric: Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: It's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Rep. Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the GOP. …Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you'll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won't [...]
Oct
11
2010
WPost: The Midterms and 'Big Government'
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Sunday's Washington Post (10/10/10)featured a story by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz that led with this claim: If there is an overarching theme of election 2010, it is the question of how big the government should be and how far it should reach into people's lives. The piece is actually an explanation of the results of a newpoll conducted by the Post along with the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. As Dean Baker noted (10/10/10), "There is absolutely nothing in this article that supports this assertion." He is correct. The Post's report deals with the supposedly conflicted nature of [...]
Dec
17
2009
Post Mishandles Post Poll
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Yesterday's Washington Post (12/16/09) reports that the public isn't sold on healthcare reform. As the headline puts it: Public Cooling to Healthcare Reform as Debate Drags On, Poll Finds The story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen explains that "there is minimal public enthusiasm for the kind of comprehensive changes in healthcare now under consideration." Now, how "comprehensive" the reforms under consideration are is certainly debatable, but these conclusions seem to be drawn from questions about costs and Barack Obama's handling of the issue. But the Post did ask other, more interesting questions–and then buried the results. Deep into the [...]
Oct
26
2009
The WP's Public Option Polling, Continued….
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In the Washington Post (10/25/09), reporter Dan Balz has a piece about the "resurrection" of the public option in the Senate negotiations over healthcare reform. But like the Post's trumpeting of its recent poll on the issue, Balz's rationale doesn't make much sense. As he sees it, Senate Democrats "reevaluated the politics of the public option" in part because support was on the rise: Then last week, new polls, one from the Washington Post and ABC News and the other from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, found clear majority support (57 percent) for a public option. The Post/ABC News [...]
Aug
17
2009
The Way They See the World
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The big news in the health reform debate is that the White House seems to be willing to give up on the "public option," a government insurance program that would compete with private insurers. Everyone sees this as a big story, but there's something revealing about the way the Washington Post's Ceci Conollyled her piece: Racing to regain control of the health-care debate, two top administration officials signaled Sunday that the White House may be willing to jettison a controversial government-run insurance plan favored by liberals. In Beltway mediaspeak, "regain control" must mean doing something that right-wing Democrats and Republicans [...]
