KRUGMAN It "isn’t about policy-it’s about broad thrusts/whether people think you’re on their side"

[kpete]

December 4, 2012, 5:21 pm

Psychodrama Queens, Revisited

A while back I worried that the Obama administration actually believed in pundit fantasies, those elaborate psychodramas supposedly going on in voters’ minds as they contemplate whether Obama has reached out enough to the center or whatever. My point wasn’t that voters are stupid; it was that people have lives, they aren’t following politics at all closely, and they vote based on broad perceptions of where politicians stand, not on the kind of thing that pundits obsess about.

At this point the Obamians seem to have learned better. But I couldn’t resist flagging a couple of examples of what voters really know. First, Public Policy Polling found that 39 percent of voters have a view, pro or con, about Simpson-Bowles. Not bad, you might think. But a quarter of voters also had views on Panetta-Burns, a plan that as it happens doesn’t exist.

Meanwhile, another poll – internet-based, but by a firm with a good record — finds that, by a margin of almost four to one, people think that going over the fiscal cliff will cause the deficit to increase. In a way, I understand this: the VSPs have been pounding the drum over and over again about how deficits are bad, evil; now they are warning about a fiscal something-or-other, so how are people supposed to know that they’re suddenly worried that we’ll reduce the deficit too much?

Anyway, these are useful reminders that politics isn’t about policy details, it’s about broad thrusts and whether people think you’re on their side.

more links:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/psychodrama-queens-revisited/

[dkf]

1. Lol that's because he thinks people don't have a clue about policy.

All they get is some vague impression and he thinks that then becomes the main point.

[gcomeau]

2. He isn't wrong.

As long as we're talking about "people" on average.