Little Helpers

by digby

Chris Bowers says that health care reform and the president himself aren’t suffering in the polls because of teabaggers but because the economy is so bad. I think that’s true, but I think the teabaggers do have have something to do with it, even though they are not the central cause.

They are out there actively putting a face on people’s free floating anxiety and a lot of people are already predisposed to loathe a face looks like Big Liberal Government, or less abstractly for some, Barack Obama. The right knows it must have an enemy and they always produce one, whether it’s the Evil Empire, welfare queens, tax ‘n spend libruls, Bill Clinton’s immoral pants, the terra-ists or Barack the Kenyan socialist. They know that people don’t understand these policy differences and so they consciously point people toward those who they want them to hate (and always away from the true culprits.)

Health care, as I’ve written before, is a particularly difficult nut to crack because the only time you really seem to reach critical mass for comprehensive reform is during a recession — and it’s at that moment that the deficits usually rise, thus bringing out the fiscal scolds to dishonestly imply to everyone that debt is root of the country’s economic problems and the free spending welfare queens are going to take what little money you have left and give it to the undeserving. What is necessary to get political support for reform is also used as the excuse not to pass it.

Now, if the Democrats thought like Republicans they would have demagogued the hell out of the malefactors of wealth and the previous administration for being craven, avaricious thieves who nearly destroyed the country until our brave Knight came along and saved everyone. Instead we are fighting with a bunch of wonky, arcane “plans” while the other side shrieks about Hitler. It’s not a fair fight.

The teabaggers wouldn’t be effective if the economy were good, but they do the dirty work when the economy is bad. In a bad economy, people are afraid and are looking for solidarity and someone to blame. The Democrats are offering neither while the Republicans offer both, even if it’s just a sideshow. It won’t necessarily help them at the polls but it’s all they need to stop the momentum.

.