Chris Cillizza, Harry Reid, and Lazy Conventional Wisdom

Photo by flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamillianactor/3681789431/">Brian Finifter</a> used under a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a> license.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza has a new post on Sen. Harry Reid that tries to deal with the results of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s poll of Nevada that I wrote about on Thursday. The poll found that 55 percent of independents and 92 percent of Democrats with unfavorable views of Reid say they don’t like him because he’s not progressive enough. These results contradict Cillizza’s earlier assertion that Reid has to “carry Obama’s agenda effectively while also appealing to Nevada voters to whom that agenda is too liberal.” The poll also doesn’t square with Cillizza’s claim that Reid is in a similar situation to South Dakota’s Tom Daschle, the Democratic senate majority leader who was defeated for reelection in 2002.

It’s possible that Cillizza’s right: Maybe a different poll would find vastly different results. Maybe if Reid moved left to satisfy Democrats and independents who disapprove of him, he’d anger the Democrats and independents who approve of him now. But what’s frustrating about most of the reporting on Reid’s poll numbers (including Cillizza’s) is the extent to which right-wing arguments about what voters want are taken for granted. Cillazza just assumed that Nevadans wanted Reid to move to the right. It seems that whenever a Democrat is unpopular, mainstream journalists assume that it’s because he or she is too liberal. That could be the case. But such claims should rest on evidence, not gut feelings or dubious parallels between South Dakota in 2002—when George W. Bush’s popularity was formidable—and Nevada, a much larger, more urban and diverse state, in 2008.

Cillizza certainly makes some interesting arguments in order to avoid acknowleging the problems that the PCCC numbers create for his assumptions. For example:

From a rawly political perspective, Reid’s number among self-identified Democrats may not matter that much as he does not have a primary race and it’s hard to imagine loyal Democratic voters ultimately opting for either former Republican state party chairwoman Sue Lowden or businessman Danny Tarkanian.

This seems almost willfully obtuse. Midterm elections are generally low-turnout, base-driven elections. It’s not that Harry Reid has to worry about Democrats voting for Lowden or Tarkanian—he has to worry about them staying home and not voting at all.

Cillizza is really missing the point here. It’s unlikely that Reid is going to be able to win over Republicans by moving to the right. Republicans do think Reid’s too liberal, but he’s the Democratic leader in the Senate—they’re not going to vote for him unless he essentially abandons his party. That’s something he doesn’t seem prepared to do. So Reid should really be worrying about getting his base to turn out and convincing persuadable independents to vote for him. The PCCC poll is the best currently available information about where Democrats and independents want Reid to go. If they say he should move left, he probably should.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate