Micah Olsen sent me the following…
I read your recent blog post about how polling doesn't really reflect approval levels, and I found I agree with most of what you write. However, I thought this article was a little off in general, and, in particular, you wrote something at the end of that post that I think, while true, isn't accurate: "there are people who disapprove of Obama because they think he's a Muslim Socialist just as there were folks who disapproved of Bush because they thought he arranged for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center." The problem I have with these kind of all-too-common statements is that try to hit both sides with a false equivalency. On the one hand, you hit the right with a charge that millions of conservatives believe, and that gets insinuated or repeated on Fox News and right-wing radio daily. On the other hand, you hit the left with a charge that only a pathetically small number of crazies believe, and that I've never heard any left-wing media outlets mention.
Most people who opposed Bush did so because of a sincere disagreement over his policies, his corruption, his power grabs, his incompetence, or his lying to get us into an ill-conceived war. Meanwhile, a vast number of conservatives — and possibly a majority of them — oppose Obama to a large degree over fantasies ("death panels"), simplistic slogans ("socialist"), policies they agree with ("setting up a commission to lower the deficit"), the opposite of what he's done ("he raised taxes"), or something Bush did ("he bailed out Wall Street").
I realize moderates and liberals tend to blame both sides for any problem, and 20 years ago, it might have been reasonable to do so. However, while the Democrats are far from perfect, the new Republican party and conservatives in general have been taken over by fanatics and a right-wing media that lies to them to keep them riled up and often voting against their own interests. Today's Democrats and the left do not have those problems much outside of a tiny extreme. For example, related to your article on poll numbers, I've heard and read lots of grumbling on the left in the last few months about Obama and the Democrats in Congress. On the other hand, I hear almost universal condemnation of the same from the right regardless of the issue; while a few years ago, I heard and read only nearly unanimous lockstep admiration from them about Bush and the Republicans in Congress regardless of what they did. Making it look like both parties do the same things (a la Jon Stewart's 10/30 rally), and not pointing out that, nowadays, it's primarily one side that has a huge segment of supporters and media that are extreme, hyper-partisan, ignorant, and irrationally angry over false or distorted issues only gives that side cover.
I more or less agree with this though I don't know that Mr. Stewart's rally says both parties do the same thing. I don't see that he's bringing the parties into it at all…merely condemning irrational fear, wherever it might lurk. But I concur that nutcase charges are given a lot more dignity and dissemination on the right than on the left…and I think some of that's financial. There's more money in writing books that say Obama is the Anti-Christ than there ever was in saying Bush was an idiot…and there is no left-wing equivalent of Limbaugh, Beck, etc., though some have tried. A friend of mine and I sometimes discuss whether this is due to the character of Liberals, that they won't go for that kind of thing, or if it's just that no one has yet figured out how to do it for that audience. I'm inclined to think the latter.