Why doesn’t Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid appear on Meet The Press frequently.
Newt Gingrich was the most frequent guest on Meet The Press during the last six months. The Democrats MUST get out there in front of those TV cameras and on radio talk shows and start explaining why their health care bills are so necessary and why people should re-elect Democrats in November. The Democratic leadership in Congress MUST appear on any talk show that will have them and explain and defend and explain and defend and explain and defend the health care bills.
And then, ……. then they should explain and defend it some more.
Surveys of Massachusetts voters showed a high degree of ignorance and mistrust about exactly how the Democratic bills, which already passed the House and Senate, will affect people who already HAVE medical coverage. The biggest mistake Obama made was to say that much of the money to pay for the health care bill in Congress would come from unspecified “cuts” in Medicare. That left Medicare recipients wondering if those cuts would mean more out of pocket expenses for them. And wondering if maybe Medicare would not be covering as many health costs for tests and procedures as it presently does. Remember, there are millions of Medicare recipients. And they generally vote.
How COULD Obama have not forseen that before he made that statement about cuts in Medicare (he called them “savings”). He needed to make it crystal clear that no one who is now on Medicare would be paying any more out of pocket expenses than at present. He failed to do that. I thought he was more politically savvy than that.
Also, Democratic leaders must VIGOROUSLY defend the stimulus money spent and show how it has helped specific people, using actual people as examples and showing how the money saved or created their jobs. When are the Democrats going to start doing that. It needs to be done IMMEDIATELY.
Time flies. The November election is getting nearer by the minute. Further delays in convincing centrist voters to support Democratic Congressional initiatives will only help the Republicans this fall. Personally, I think that Reid and Pelosi have been terrible salespeople when it comes to selling the Democratic agenda to the voters. Those two couldn’t sell a glass of ice water to a thirsty Arab in the Sahara desert. In August.
There’s a good article in the NYT that explains the Obama stimulus effects as succeeding. I think that more economics writers and editors might take up the challenge to write similar articles. Here’s the link… Great article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html
Re. Obama’s boo boo at saying he’s cutting medicare, I thought he said he’s cutting medicare costs. IOW he’s trying to do the same job but just in a more efficient way. It’s a different issue entirely. He does need to say this to get Blue Dog Democrats to support the bill because they don’t want the money from the bill to be wasted unless costs can be controlled.
Comment by Al — February 19, 2010 @ 5:14 pm
BTW I think Palosi and Reid would appear more often if it wasn’t too close to elections. I’m sure that people out west don’t like their representatives appearing on an East coast show too much and not representing their interests. And Democrats do go home often to try to do their jobs.
Comment by Al — February 19, 2010 @ 5:23 pm
Newt’s regular and frequent appearances on the news/talk show circuit I think is more a sign of the conservative-slanting news media than it is a sign that Democrats aren’t ‘getting out there.’ Don’t get me wrong, I think the Dems have done an awful job of selling health care reform, but I think that’s only half the story.
Its true that ‘Single-Payer’ was mentioned more in the last year than ever before, which is definitely a good thing, but my impression is that it was mentioned only in a context that it was a system advocated by Progressives than never had a chance of passing. With maybe the exceptions of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman was Single-Payer ever discussed as a serious solution to the nation’s health care woes.
What’s more, the impression given by ‘mainstream’ media that more Democrats are vacating their seats in advance of the mid-term elections, which actually isn’t true, is yet another sign that the media can’t be trusted to give unbiased and accurate information.
Comment by OahuSophist — February 28, 2010 @ 9:37 pm
I think that the bipartisan meeting with Obama made all the news and informed a lot of people what the issues are about. But now I wonder if it made much of an impact. Perhaps there are some bipartisan meetings taking place but they aren’t being reported. I suspect that with the latest changes it’s ready for a risky reconciliation vote.
Comment by Al — March 2, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
Nancy Palosi has been on Charley Rose about 14 times. Recently he had her on for health care. This is the second show recently which explains a lot about what has been going on….
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10903
Comment by Al — March 12, 2010 @ 7:26 am
Al:
Pelosi and Reid and lots of other Democrats needed to be on a lot more shows than Charlie Rose.
I might get some flack for saying this, but here goes.
I think that the aforementioned leaders should have been willing to take their case on health care to the American people DIRECTLY, even if it meant using Democratic National Committee money to run TV ads.
They should have been EVEN willing to go on Fox and debate Hannity and O’Reilly. It’s that important. Failure to do that invites suspicions that the Democrats didn’t have the strong confidence of their convictions to defend it. Or that they maybe didn’t even read and understand all of the 2000 plus pages of it.
I used to think that the Democratic Party should simply boycott Fox News altogether because of it’s slant and refuse, en masse, to even appear on that network.
But that was shortsighted.
Like it or not, millions of people DO watch Fox and that is NOT going to change. Reid and Pelosi and other leading Dems should be willing to fight so hard for their health care bill that they are even willing to go “into the lions den” if that would help eople understand, and hopefully support, the health care reform effort.
Not eveyone who watches Fox is a total conservative ideologue. Some are sympathetic to that point of view but are open minded enough to at least give a listen to the other side.
I pray that the effort is not lost now. And that Pelosi can get that magical 216 or 217 votes.
Comment by Joe — March 12, 2010 @ 9:56 am
If they’re not running for national office, then there’s a disincentive for them to appear on Fox. It would just get Polosi’s conservative supporters angry that she’s not back in CA tending to their needs and complaints. Also other Democrats don’t want her grandstanding on the bill and criticizing any of them– especially what they say about other Democrats. When asked about Massa on the show, she claims that she hadn’t heard any of that. Thought she was very tactful in what she said. She’s a good leader. That’s probably more important than better PR. The House has been coming out with good bills.
The House is getting ready for a vote pretty soon when the latest version comes out of the CBO. I think that Polosi seems confident that it will pass. Maybe next week. That’s right… 216 including her vote.
Comment by Al — March 13, 2010 @ 10:37 pm