Reich: The Politics of Fear and the Party of Non-Voters
Moreover, polls of “likely voters” are notoriously imprecise because they reflect everyone who says they’re likely to vote – including those who hope to but won’t, as well as those who won’t but don’t want to admit it. Remember: The biggest party in America is neither Democrats nor Republicans. It’s the party of non-voters — a group that outnumbers the other two.
There’s clear reason for Democrats and Independents to fear Romney and Ryan — their reverse Robin-Hood budgets that take from the poor and middle class and reward the rich; their determination to do away with Medicare and Medicare, as well as Dodd-Frank constraints on Wall Street, and ObamaCare; their opposition to abortion even after rape or incest, and rejection of equal marriage rights; their support for “profiling” immigrants; and their disdain of the “47 percent,” to name a few.
Meanwhile, for four years the GOP and its auxiliaries in Fox News and yell radio have told terrible lies about our president – charging he wasn’t born in America, he’s a socialist, he doesn’t share American values. They’ve disdained and disrespected President Obama in ways no modern president has had to endure.
They’re drummed up fear in a public battered by an economic crisis Republicans largely created, while hiding George W. Bush so we won’t be reminded. And they’ve channeled that fear toward President Obama and even to the central institutions of our democracy, casting his administration and our government as the enemy.
http://robertreich.org/post/33252781710
