Jacob Weisberg, as part of the recent multi-party conversation on “liberal condescension”, identifies a point of central importance:
In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama’s tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.
Whose fault? Our fault.
James Young
So, in other words, Weisberg doesn’t get it.
LFS
Ah yes. Its the public’s fault that they don’t recognize that progressives know better than they do how to run their lives. It couldn’t possibly be that a) Obama’s political and executive experience were shit and his judgement is a joke, and b) all these progressive ideas are unworkable and thus rightly felt by the public at large to be unpopular.