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.

A New York Times article (4/23/10) by Peter Baker and David Herszenhorn remarks of Barack Obama:

With his poll numbers sagging, the choreographed confrontation seemed aimed at tapping the nation’s antiestablishment mood as well as muscling financial regulation legislation through Congress.

While Obama's confrontation with the financial industry was no doubt choreographed, are his poll numbers really sagging?

This chart from Pollster.com, averaging out all the major national polls, reveals instead that opinion on Obama's job performance is remarkably steady (and remarkably evenly divided, too).

It's hard to turn a line like that into exciting news, which isn't to say that the people who write press releases for polling firms can't try.  The Monkey Cage blog (4/21/10; via Yglesias, 4/21/10) noted a release from Quinnipiac that began:

President Barack Obama’s job approval, which bounced slightly to a 45-46 percent split March 25 in the wake of his healthcare victory, has flattened out at 44-46 percent, his lowest approval rating since his inauguration, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

The approval ratings since the beginning of this year on which Quinnipiac based this exciting tale: 45, 45, 46, 45, 44. The margin of error of these polls: +/- 2.2 percentage points.

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.