The Beltway Bubble and Dems: Collusion or genuine insularity?

[vi5]

O.K. time and time again we see it. The cable news chatfests and the editorial pages of the major national newspapers beat a drum and send for the message of what is important and what issues are serious and what people should think about them. Coincidentally or not, these are almost always Republican leaning positions and talking points: Unions are bad...Medicare/Medicaid are bad....Social Security is in crisis.....Country X is a grave threat and danger....Cutting military spending is bad...taxing the rich is bad.....deficits are bad.

This stuff is hammered again and again and again and again....over and over and over and over.

And yet strangely enough when polls are taken, most of the time the public is not fooled. They still support collective bargaining, they still support Medicare/Medicaid and social security, still support the idea of a public option, still support taxing the rich, and still support cutting defense...and still rank cutting the deficit fairly low on the list of priorities. This is easily explained by the basic fact that viewership and readership for these media outlets is, in the big picture, minimal and with minimal influence on most average people.

So the question then is, when prominent Democrats, and often times a majority of elected Democrats still buy into these narratives, and still take positions that are against what have traditionally been Democratic positions, and still give legitimacy to Republican and Beltway Media framed narratives.......how much of this is that they really are just completely insulated? When instead of just saying "Eff you....time and again the american people say what they actually want and support so we're not buying into this bullshit you're pedding" they still act as though the republican stance is the one with broad popular support. How much of that is them genuinely just being so insulated, and so consumed by cable news "reporting" and the editorial pages that they actually believe that Joe Scarborough or Chris Matthews or Bill O'Reily or David Brooks, or Richard Cohen all actually are representing the stances popular with the American people. Could they really not know that the whole Tea Party thing is a giant corporate funded sham, and as such opt not to completely dismiss it as such for fear of offending a segment of the population that will never under any circumstances vote for them anyway?

I don't want to believe it could be that level of gullibility but the only other option to this is that they are actively in sync with these goals and desires to fundamentally alter the way we function as a nation and have for decades.

[tularetom]

1. In a way I'd like to believe that is true but

If it is true, it doesn't say much about their perceptiveness or the courage of their convictions.

Or possibly, as you say, they may be simply co conspirators in the whole evil plan.

[vi5]

2. Exactly....

It's either weak and gullible, or complicit in the evil.

Neither option fills me with warm, fuzzy feelings.

[notadmblnd]

3. No, I don't think they are gullible

I think they're just as interested as the right- in selling their souls to the highest corporate bidder.