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" This is why I love Democrats. Seriously, this is what makes them absolutely adorable. You may have noticed that the Occupy movement has engaged the country in a long-delayed conversation about whether or not we should hang the people who stole this country&amp;#039;s wealth, or simply feed their nether bits to the wolverines. (I may be simplifying matters a bit here, but it is for concision&amp;#039;s sake only, I assure you.) This has temporarily replaced the Maypo in the spines of Democratic officeholders with something a bit more substantial \u2014 Silly Putty, perhaps. It also has improved their prospects for re-election in a time of economic downturn and general disgust at the way things are being run in this country, and especially for whom they are being run. In fact, this energy, which the Democrats did not seek and which they in no way encouraged, is the only thing that&amp;#039;s worked for the party since it elected Barack Obama three years ago last weekend. So, of course, it&amp;#039;s time to be vewwwwy, vewwwy afwaid of attaching yourself too closely to something that actually is working.  Comes now The Democratic Strategist, run by Stan Greenberg and a bunch of other guys who pine for the triangulatin&amp;#039; golden age of the Pericles of the Ozarks back in the 1990&amp;#039;s while maintaining within themselves the political enthusiasm of a sea sponge.  Watch out, they tell us. The Occupy movement&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;apparent&amp;quot; popularity may be a trap!   So they trot out a poll that they use to caution against &amp;quot;euphoria&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;premature declarations of victory,&amp;quot; which, of course, nobody is making at this point. But, whenever political enthusiasm shows signs of breaking out, the Clintonian wet-blankets are sure to follow. So they pair up questions like these... &amp;quot;The big banks got bailed out but the middle class got left behind. Our economy works for Wall Street CEOs but not for the middle class. America isn&amp;#039;t supposed to only work for the top one percent.&amp;quot; Agree: 75% Disagree: 20% &amp;quot;The top 1 percent are the ones who create jobs in this country. They are already overburdened with job-killing regulations and high corporate taxes. We need to create a climate that encourages business, not one that gives in to protestors.&amp;quot; Agree: 61% Disagree: 32% ...and from these results, they conclude... The inescapable fact, however, is that many relatively apolitical Americans simply do not commit themselves to any organized political ideology nor do they systematically adjust all their individual viewpoints to bring them into conformity with that perspective. They hold ideas they know to be contradictory in memory and, when called upon to make choices based upon those ideas, compare and balance them using what they call &amp;quot;common sense&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;my way of looking at things.&amp;quot; They then go on to warn the Democrats that this apparently immutable truth of American politics should make them wary of too closely relying on the Occupy movement as we trundle along toward the next elections. (As professional political analysts, of course, they are precluded from drawing the obvious conclusions from the data they present: that a great many Americans are a) historically illiterate, b) economically innumerate, c) politically apathetic, and d) generally disinterested in the job of informed self-government.) Of course, the phenomenon these guys describe is a function of the noisy cult of the &amp;quot;vital center&amp;quot; and of &amp;quot;common ground&amp;quot; that derails all political discussion any time actual politics threatens to break out. It is also a function of how journalism is done: the endless, and increasingly preposterous search for &amp;quot;balance&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;objectivity&amp;quot; and the idiotic notion that, because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right \u2014 or, at least, Not Wrong, so therefore any crackpot notion should be mainstreamed because sane people &amp;quot;on the other side&amp;quot; believe otherwise. (Teach the Controversy!) Why shouldn&amp;#039;t Americans be historically illiterate, economically innumerate, politically apathetic, and generally disinterested in the job of informed self-government? Through 30 years of bad politics and worse journalism, that&amp;#039;s what they&amp;#039;ve been taught is the essence of the system. &amp;amp;gt;Here&amp;#039;s the thing, though. Back when the Tea Party was riding high, and on its way to helping create the government-deforming elections of 2010, did you see any Republican think-tank issuing polls to the effect that the GOP should be careful not to be &amp;quot;euphoric&amp;quot; about the Tea Party&amp;#039;s enthusiasm and apparent popularity and not to use it to issue &amp;quot;premature declarations of victory&amp;quot;? Did you hear any earnest maunderings about how Americans can entertain two contradictory ideas at once and, therefore, Republicans shouldn&amp;#039;t lean too heavily on the radical notions bubbling up from the base? No, what the Republicans did was take the one of the two contradictory ideas Americans believed on one issue or another, and then they hammered it until they completely submerged the other idea. (&amp;quot;Barack Obama Is Not a Socialist,&amp;quot; to mention only one.) And that actually worked. Only Democrats could look at a wild-card like the Occupy movement and worry themselves stupid in public not about whether they could take advantage of it, but, rather, whether they should even try. I swear, there are people in that party who could hit the PowerBall number this Wednesday and take so long figuring out the tax implications that they forget where they put the ticket. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a11611/democracy-corps-economy-poll-6547080/>