A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires

[phantom power]

If the polling suggests this, and assuming the polls are being properly interpreted, etc, then that's interesting. It seems to gloss over the historical inconvenience that people tend to believe the narrative they hear. If the narrative is "it's the Democrats' fault", then that's what they will believe regardless of how counter-factual that narrative is. What the polling suggests is that the media go-to narratives on politics are beginning to shift, which would probably be a very good trend indeed, if it's really happening.

Steve M describes the Villager reaction to sequestration very well:

[T]his is not journalism — it’s catechism. Democrats must be wrong. Republicans can be wrong or they can be right, but Democrats must always be the real guilty parties. This is an inviolate tenet of the Beltway faith. It’s a myth we must all live by — otherwise we might have to address the question of whether it’s even possible to run a country responsibly with the Republicans as one of our two major parties.

So true, but every poll I’ve seen shows that, by a fairly wide margin, the public is against sequestration and will blame Republicans for it. There’s no way Republicans can control the messaging once it hits, because while Cokie and Co. could really give a fuck about spending cuts that disrupt ordinary American’s real lives, a lot of local media will give the story a lot of negative play.

Beltway Republicans live in kind of a double bubble. The first layer is made of their own WOLVERINES and the second is made of establishment media’s BOTH SIDES DO IT. We saw how this played out last November, when they weren’t unskewing the polls, they were agreeing with Joe Scar that the race was a toss-up and that Nate Silver couldn’t possibly know more than Michael Barone.

We know how that one ended.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/02/25/a-loose-affiliation-of-millionaires-and-billionaires/

[WCGreen]

1. It's simple...

The mainstream media is stuck in a shoal and is never going to get out. They wanted to be players and players are not good at criticizing themselves. The border between pundit and politco has been breached.

[Ikonoklast]

2. The fame and power are addicting.

And like addicts, are usually destroyed by their drug of choice.

All the Beltway Cocktail Circuits assholes are now co-opted and corrupted by not keeping their distance from those that they should be questioning.

Matter of time before it all falls apart, as these people are more and more seen as willing pawns instead of fair traders.