Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: The Right and mainstream America: a universe apart via Salon: Glenn Greenwald by Glenn Greenwald on 10/10/08 As the Right increasingly (a) demands to hear more about Bill Ayers and Obama The Communist/Muslim Terrorist and (b) proclaims Sarah Palin to be the darling of the Regular American and the new right-wing superstar -- claims that are converging in the traveling lynch mob tour known as the "McCain/Palin campaign" -- two new polls, one from Newsweek and one from Fox (.pdf), conclusively demonstrate how out-of-touch and fringe the Right has become. Both polls show that as the Right reveals its true Ayers-driven face to the nation, (a) Obama's popularity holds steady while McCain and Palin's plummets, and (b) Sarah Palin is a massive liability for the McCain campaign.
The Newsweek poll shows Obama/Biden with a lead of 11 points (up from 4 points a month ago) and Fox shows Obama/Biden with a 7-point lead (they had McCain winning by 3 a month ago), but in terms of seeing what the right-wing movement in this country has become, how fringe and disconnected from reality they are, the more revealing facts are buried inside the poll numbers. In the new Newsweek poll, taken over the last two days in the midst of the Ayers attacks, Obama now has a +24 favorability rating (60/36), which has improved from the +20 (57/37) he registered in last month's poll. In the new poll, McCain's favorability rating is only +6 (51/45), which has worsened substantially since the +21 he registered last month (57/36). The same has happened to Sarah Palin's ratings, which has dropped from +20 (52/32) in the prior month to a meager +4 now (49/45). If anything, Americans see McCain -- not Obama -- as out-of-touch with their values, as 49% believe McCain does not share their values and only 47% believe he does. By stark contrast, Americans overwhelmingly believe Obama shares their values (59-37%) (Newsweek, 12-14). Americans also overwhelmingly believe that Obama would "fit well with people in your local community" (63-31%), while a much smaller margin (54-40%) says that about McCain (Newsweek 12, 14) . Worse still (for the Right), a large majority -- 55-39% -- answer "NO" when asked if Sarah Palin "is qualified to step in as President if she had to" (Newsweek 14), whereas only 46% answered "NO" last month. And 47% say that Hockey Mom Palin does not share their values, while only 48% say that Palin does (versus 59% who say that the Radical-Terrorist Obama shares their values) (Newsweek 14). Worse even still (for the Right), Americans say that Obama's selection of Joe Biden makes them more likely to vote for Obama by a margin of 11% (34-23%), but say that McCain's selection of Palin makes them less likely to vote for McCain by a margin of 8% (32-40%) (Fox 8-9). And in the last month alone, the percent saying that McCain's selection of Palin has made them less likely to vote for McCain has increased substantially (31% to 40%). Even worse (for the Right), Obama the Terrorist now has the highest favorability rating of any of the four candidates (60%), while Palin the New Reagan Superstar has the lowest (47%). And even Biden's favorability rating (57%) is higher than McCain's (53). More revealingly, Palin has the highest unfavorability rating (42%), followed by McCain (40%), Obama (34%) and Biden (29%) (Fox 13-16). And in the last month -- as the McCain/Palin campaign began spewing their bile -- Obama's favorability rating has increased (57% to 60%) while his unfavorability rating has declined (36% to 34%). By contrast, McCain's favorability/unfavorability ratings have plummeted during this same time (60/33 to 53/40), as has Palin's (54/27 to 47/42). Standing next to Sarah Palin in that debate has turned Joe Biden -- Joe Biden -- into a wildly popular politician in America, with a 57/29 favorability rating. In sum, the more Americans see of and hear from Sarah Palin and are exposed to her filthy smear politics, the worse she looks to them. And the more the McCain/Palin campaign attack Obama with ugly, despicable smears, the worse McCain/Palin look, while Obama's popularity with Americans continues to solidify and even gradually increase (Americans believe Obama is "trustworthy" by an overwhelming margin of 60-32%) (Fox 36). And perhaps most damning of all for the McCain campaign, when asked which campaign has been "too negative or nasty," Americans choose the McCain/Palin campaign by an overwhelming margin (39-10%) (Newsweek 17) -- by far the most lopsided margin for that question over the last eight years (by comparison, both the Democratic and GOP campaigns of 2000 and 2004 registered no more than 24% on that question and each side received roughly equal ratings). Fox specifically asked if the "Obama-Ayers connection" would make Americans less likely to vote for Obama, and Americans resoundingly answered NO (32-61%), and -- as Greg Sargent notes -- since GOP voters overwhelmingly answered "YES" to that question, and would not have voted for Obama anyway, the Ayers issue, even when Fox asked about it directly, has almost no effect. Unsurprisingly, then, Americans overwhelmingly believe that the McCain/Palin ads are "too negative" (56-41%) and "misleading and distorting" (58-37%), while Americans overwhelmingly believe that the Obama/Biden ads are neither too negative (29-68%) nor misleading and distorting (36-57%) (Newsweek 23-24). Americans believe Obama/Biden is running a "positive" rather than "negative" campaign (56-21%), but believe the opposite about McCain/Palin by an almost equal margin (27-51%) (Fox 38). Having McCain and Palin run around the country stoking right-wing fury and unmasking their movement for all to see is backfiring in the extreme. If you're an Obama supporter, what you should hope for above all else is that the McCain/Palin campaign continues to cater itself to the desires and advice of the National Review/Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity mentality, which believe that Sarah Palin is a huge political asset among Normal Americans (Free Sarah Palin!) and that if Americans just keep hearing more and more and more about what a Terrorist-loving Muslim-Communist-radical Barack Hussein Obama is (ACORN!!), then . . . any day now! . . . Americans are going to decide that they want the same twisted, bloated faction that has run our country into the ground for the last eight years to continue to rule. The Limbaugh/Fox News/Bill Kristol/National Review Right is a faction in desperate need of collective death as a movement. And it will be particularly appropriate if the final blow is delivered by their own malicious, hate-mongering hand. 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