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by digby

According to Gloria Borger on CNN says that a new poll shows that “one in three Americans think the House bill is just too liberal and one in ten think it’s not liberal enough.”

I have no idea what that means, but I’m fairly sure that asking people if something is “too liberal” is almost always going to evoke a reflexive fear response in most Americans since Arthur Finkelstein made the label a loathed boogeyman over 25 years ago:

Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on a single message with great repetition. He is credited with helping to make “liberal” a dirty word in the United States during the late 1980s and 1990s through the use of commercial messages such as this, intended to damage the image of Jack Reed: That’s liberal. That’s Jack Reed. That’s wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you.[9]

It was a very successful campaign and it stuck. Now most liberals don’t even call themselves that anymore. Calling yourself a liberal causes social discomfort, as Finkelstein’s strategy was designed to do. So when news organizations pose questions or formulate their analysis in this way, they are playing into a stereotype created by conservatives to brand liberalism as out of the mainstream.

Considering all that, if CNN only has around 30% of the country who feel the House health care bill is too liberal, then it’s actually in pretty good shape.