If Liz were Queen

I just read the headlines of a post in the Huffington Post.  It was a story from the Washington Post and the headllines read: “Several Forces Threaten Democrats in 2010“

I knew it was nothing less than baloney from the headlines alone and if I had seen it in any other source than the Huffington Post which usually has credibility with me, I would have immediately dismissed it.  So investigated the veracity of the article and this is my conclusion:  Republican clap trap written by a Republican claptrapper by the name of Dan Balz.

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First of all, the sources and the misinformation that Mr. Balz uses for his conclusions include people like the following:

1) Republican pollster Neil Newhouse  (Sure I’m going to buy his claptrap.) “We’re going to have a nice breeze at our back.”

2) One of the Mr. Balz’s sources was  former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Right sure, that sack of right-wing pus is not biased.)

3) Balz uses the fake American Prosperity and Freedom Works astro turf tea parties for further evidence that Democrats will have a hard time in 2010:  ” The most demonstrable political uprising of the past few months has been the populist anger seen at town hall meetings during the August congressional recess and expressed through conservative talk radio, television and blogs.”

4) Balz is not totally stupid. Of course he throw in the usual straw man warnings to make his hack job look convincing:  Republican leaders today cannot automatically count on all the angry populists to enthusiastically support them.

5)  Misinformation:  Independent voters were instrumental in giving Democrats their victories in 2006 and  2008.

This is not true at all.  Independent voters were not instrumental in giving Democrats their victories–especially for Obama.  Check out the national exit polls for the presidential election yourselves and  you’ll see: Americans under the age of 30 played a major role in the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. According to the 2008 national exit poll, 18-29 year-olds made up 18 percent of the electorate and they cast 66 percent of their votes for Obama vs. 32 percent for his Republican rival, John McCain. Based on the exit poll results, we can estimate that of the 132 million Americans who voted in 2008, almost 24 million were under the age of 30 and they provided Barack Obama with a plurality of more than 8 million votes out of his overall plurality of 9.5 million votes.

6)  More misinformation from Blaz: “Finally, Obama risks disillusionment on the left in two areas. One is health care, where progressives have mounted a noisy campaign to make certain a public option is included in any final legislation.”  (by use of the word “noisy”, Mr. Balz is leaving a misleading impression that the desire for a strong public option is just “noise”.  This is a lie.  It is not even substantiated by the Wall Street Journal, one of the most conservatives rags around.

New polling shows strong momentum for health insurance reform (Sept 14)
Chart of the day (Oct 1)
New York Times Sept 25 “65% of Americans support a public option”

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FINALLY IF ALL THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO DESTROY ANY CREDIBILITY THAT MR. BALZ MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN BY HAVING HIS MISLEADING HEADLINES PUBLISHED IN THE HUFFINGTON POST, PLEASE CONSIDER HEADLINES FROM SOME OF MR. BLAZ’S PREVIOUS ARTICLES OF MISINFORMATION. You decide:

McCain Keeps Pressure on Obama (Oct 11, 2009)  McCain, pressure on Obama?  Don’t make me laugh.

Poll May Point to Democrats’ Worries Beyond Old Dominon (Oct 9)

N.J. Debate Reveals Weaknesses of Incumbent, Main Challenger ( Oct 4)

Opposition to Obama’s Health-Reform Plan is High, but Easing (Sept 14)  No, it is not “high”–not when more than two-thirds of the American people want a public option.   “High” is more than a hyperbole, it is a damn lie.

Obama Must Look Beyond his party, Reclaim Independents (Sept 13) BOGUS advice from the fox in the hen house.  Why the hell should Obama “look beyond his party”? After all according to USA today:  63 million registered Democrats 47 million registered Republicans 32 million registered as independents.

All recent polls since September show strong support for the Public option INCLUDING THE MAJORITY OF independents.

For example:
HCAN asked pollster John Anzalone to ask a similar question to voters in Blue Dog districts where people were slightly more likely to have voted for McCain than Obama. Here are the results from that question:
66% of voters and 63% of independents agreed that “The key to health insurance reform is making coverage affordable to families and small business.