IBD: Democrats are the ones out of touch.

Last Tuesday there was an eye-opening article from Investors Business Daily (IBD) that showed how out of touch and blindly loyal Democrats are to the cause and to the current president.  Notice in the charts below how the independents are far closer to Republicans on the various measures and it is the Democrats who are skewed away from the norm.

Click to enlarge.

We keep hearing about how the Republican Party is full of radical Tea Party crazies. But our latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that it's Democrats who are out of touch with reality and well outside the mainstream.

The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren't working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats.

On issue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey. 

They are, by and large, Pollyanna-ish about the economy, they can see no evil when it comes to Obama or ObamaCare, and they are extremists when it comes to the size and role of the federal government.

Well, there is that.

Friday Musical Interlude - The Baseballs

German band The Baseballs' are a German rock/swing band that have done a number of great covers of songs, many of which pull off the near-impossible in music: improving on the original.  This video is I Don't Feel Like Dancing (a cover of the Scissor Sisters) from 2009.

Thursday Hillary Bash - polling news

Townhall this week had the scoop on the Hillary polling and it's not good news for the former first lady.  Her ratings are underwater in a recent poll.  But there's also another important takeaway from this.

For the first time in years, more Americans find Hillary Clinton "unfavorable" than "favorable" - although she is still the clear leading potential Democratic nominee for 2016.

The change is likely due to a plethora of recent bad press around the Benghazi scandal, despite the fact that reports from The Weekly Standard, ABC News, and CBS News were later debunked and retracted.

 Firstly, Hillary's unfavorable numbers have made moves in the wrong direction (for her) on two distinct occasions.  The first time was during the Benghazi scandal - more on that later.  

The second poin where her unfavorables jump t is around the time of Obamacare's horrible roll-out.  She's suffering from the fallout of that by association even though she tried to avoid being associated with it throughout it's lifespan.  Everyone knows she backed it, she tried to enact HillaryCare back when Bill was president.  She cannot distance herself from it completely, nor will she want to do so - she has to maintain the liberal base of the party in her camp.  Yet it could be major concern for her in the general election even if she manages to win the primary by not repudiating Obamacare.  

These two critical shifts may or may not be reversible but represent a big problem for Hillary's 2016 aspirations (assuming the YouGov poll is not an outlier, which remains to be seen).

Back to Benghazi.  I've included the links about part of the story being debunked and retracted.  It seems as if the seeds are being sewn to show that there was no scandal whatsoever surrounding Benghazi.  The CBS news scandal in particular has taken on a life of its own about shoddy journalism.  But in 3 years if Hillary Clinton is able to point back and say 'that was inaccurate press coverage back in 2012, go back and look at the retractions and the stories that were debunked' she can win the argument.

But it won't be on facts.  Shoddy journalism aside, it does not change the fact that the Benghazi attacks caught the State Department off guard and unprepared.  Whose fault is that?  The fact that the White House and indeed Hillary Clinton attempted to blame this on a video and downplay any terrorism aspect to the attacks is still a shameful scandal.  The fact that 4 Americans are needlessly dead is not a phony scandal.

The sideshow into who on the ground said what is not as important as what wasn't done leading up to, and during the attack on the embassy.  that has State Department, ergo Hillary Clinton, written all over it.  And for that her unfavorable ratings do not deserve to recover.  For once, shoddy journalism worked in favor of the GOP, and they should not shy away from taking advantage of it the way Democrats routinely do.  The underlying scandal is still very real.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Priorities USA shifting priority to Hillary

Democratic insiders are an incestuous bunch.  Priorities USA, one president Obama's driving forces, is quietly cementing the shift towards Hillary Clinton.  If you don't think Hillary is going to run for president after reading this, you really do have your head in the sand.

The top fundraiser behind Hillary Clinton’s first presidential bid is currently in talks to take on a major fundraising role at Priorities USA — the leading super PAC that backed President Obama last year and is now positioning itself behind Clinton ahead of her possible White House run in 2016.

Jonathan Mantz, who served as Clinton’s national finance director in 2008 and is one of the Democratic Party’s biggest names in fundraising, is set to join Priorities USA as a senior adviser, while retaining his position as managing director of BGR Group, a D.C.-based lobbying firm, BuzzFeed has learned.

Four sources familiar with the Mantz discussions said he will fundraise for Priorities as the group transitions from the last presidential election into its next phase — a pro-Clinton paid media effort, likely led by Jim Messina and John Podesta, top former aides to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton respectively.

Mantz, according to one source familiar with Priorities USA, has already been making calls to other fundraisers and consultants in Washington to inform them of the new arrangement, the details of which are still being finalized.

This is the sort of thing Bill Clinton wants to happen under the radar.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Bill about ready to go Sean Penn

Bill Clinton wants Hillary to have her cake and eat it too.  He sounds ready to go all Sean Penn on the media.  He wants Hillary to be able to run for president in secrecy until the time is right that all of her ducks are in a row and she can announce at a time of her choosing.  He wants her to be able to fund-raise in private.  He wants her to be able to pick her team for her War Room in private.  He wants her to be able to secretly line up endorsement deals without the light of the media shining upon it all.  Guess what Bill, it's not 1992.  Media is everywhere.  Instagram and Youtube capture most everything.  You can't campaign and plot like it was the early 90s.  You just can't.

Click here for video if it does not appear.

The media hasn't sat idly by and opted to not cover their next superhero and are having none of it.

"We have newspapers that have people devoted to doing nothing but covering a campaign that doesn't exist," he said. "So then they have to decide to create stories. You know, we don't need that."

Clinton did not mention which newspapers he might have been talking about, but at least one—the Times—has very publicly assigned a reporter, Amy Chozick, to cover the Clintons full time.

Chozick and her colleagues at the Times responded to the president's comments by, in effect, rejecting the premise that Hillary Clinton isn't seeking the White House:

Via Twitter:

If this becomes a shooting war it would not be such a bad thing.  I don't expect that, but if the press turns on Hillary the Democrats are in big trouble in 2016.  Who else do they have - Biden, Warren?  Neither can win.

UPDATE:  Adding another video where Bill expresses concern that the media are jumping the gun.

Thursday Hillary Bash - The film must go on!

It looks like all of those cancelled Hillary Clinton biopics scheduled for 2015/2016 releases that got cancelled were too much for liberal Hollywood to bear and a biopic is back on.  Oh, Hurrah.

NBC and CNN had both cancelled their biopics in September due to public pressure.  That didn't stand for long with progressive Hollywood.

Lionsgate is in early talks to make Rodham, Temple Hill's and The Arlook Group’s biopic of the former first lady, New York senator, secretary of state and possible presidential candidate, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

James Ponsoldt, who last directed the acclaimed indie flick The Spectacular Now, is on board to direct the drama, which was written by Young-Il Kim.

The script, which was on the 2012 Black List, portrays Rodham as a young lawyer on the committee involved in President Richard Nixon's impeachment, as well as shows her juggling a diverging career path with her unresolved feelings for future president Bill Clinton.

That's right, Hollywood wants another liberal presidency.  Hillary Clinton fits the bill (pardon the pun).  Putting some flattering biopic out there showing how Hillary can juggle a bunch of difficult things at once, and having some young actress portray her is Hollywood's attempt to Whitewater whitewash her image and put voters into a positive frame of mind about her, right in time for election season.

That's their right, but it's undue influence among low information voters and is a distasteful effort to sway the election with their bias.

The lesson from this that conservatives keep forgetting to mind, is not that politics is unfair, but rather that politics is dirty and often takes distasteful decisions to win. Sad but true.