Listen Up
By Al Giordano
Those who errantly measure public opinion and passion by what the commercial media and its pundits rail about on any given day really need to get out there and knock on some doors.
Thousands of volunteers and organizers across the country will be doing that this weekend, with Organizing for America’s Pledge Project Canvass, listening to everyday Americans’ voices and signing them up to help push Congress on bringing more budgetary support to Education, Energy and Health Care. It’s happening in every state and nearly every city and county, and the doers (as opposed to the mere talkers) have been signing up to share the load, here.
Ironically, the very media and blogosphere talkers and scribblers that need, more than most, to participate in such a door-to-door reality check won’t be doing so on Saturday and Sunday. They almost never do. They consider the heavy lifting of community organizing to be beneath them. And as a result, they tend to have a very twisted idea of how the American people view current events.
Still, here’s something that those who claim the AIG bonus flap has brought the nation to the threshold of some college educated person’s idea of a “progressive” uprising can do to edify themselves without having to leave the comfort of behind their desks. Just read the questions addressed to the President yesterday at a Town Hall meeting by the real people who attended it. (The transcript includes the answers, too, which are also very much worth studying.)
It turns out that when, on Thursday, White House senior advisor David Axelrod told the Washington Post, "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG. They are thinking about their own jobs,” he was correct.
The president did some listening to the people yesterday at a Town Hall meeting in California. That's what a community organizer does: he and she seek the people out and listen carefully to what they have to say. Only then, and based on that, does action become effective. We’ve already established that the questions at these Town Halls aren’t planted (at the last one, a Sean Hannity fan stood up and asked the President when he’d sit down and have a beer with her right-wing talker hero, which was also revealing, in this sense: she was more interested in how her favorite TV celebrity fared than about the “issues” he rails upon). The Town Halls are a pretty good indicator of what kinds of things are on the minds of the people who don’t generally have unmediated access to speak their peace through the mass media.
And anybody that has been at one of these events, or watched them on TV or on the Internet, knows that the president is a pretty good and fair facilitator. He calls on folks throughout the hall, including up in the nosebleed seats, and offers them something more in response than prepackaged sound bites.
Read the whole thing. But listen especially to the questions he’s getting. People are not really that interested in the tantrums of the chattering classes over relatively symbolic matters like executive bonuses. Axelrod is right: we want to know how policies will affect us, our loved ones, and our ability to keep going day after day.
Here are the questions asked yesterday, in order:
Q Good afternoon, President Obama. I have a very simple question. Do you have intentions of, when the reelection comes, of running for President again?
Q My question concerns those states who have refused to take certain portions of the stimulus money. Is there any way to reallocate that money to those states who are willing recipients -- (laughter and applause) -- such as California? (Applause.)
Q I'm a community bank SBA lender and have proudly been one for 20 years. We're very, very excited about the stimulus package and we are going to do everything we can to get the money out there, including financing the construction projects that you're talking about. However, as a lender and as a bank, we have a problem that I feel needs to be addressed.
When we make loans that are less than the normal quality, even with the SBA guarantee, the regulators tend to criticize us. And when they criticize us, they make us set aside reserves as if the loan is going to be bad, and that eats into our capital. That's part of the problem that banks are having right now and why they needed the TARP money.
Not all banks are bad banks, as you know, and as a community bank that's been around for 85 years, we haven't even taken TARP money. We want to make SBA loans, but we don't want to get our hands slapped by the regulators when we try to help these people. And last year is going to be a less than stellar tax return for everybody that's had a problem, that is going to come to the SBA for help.
Will you be able to speak with the regulators and set some kind of new bar so that we won't be criticized and we can actually go out and loan this money that we want to?
Q I'd like to ask you what are you planning to do on immigration, the broken system that we have? And when do you plan on doing this? (Applause.)
Q Thank you. Hi. I'm a teacher in Santa Ana. (Applause.) Thank you. And I got my RIF notice on Saturday and --
THE PRESIDENT: I'm sorry, you got what notice?
Q My RIF notice, which is I'm going to be -- the intention to be laid off.
THE PRESIDENT: A pink slip?
Q Yes, a pink slip. That's why it went pink. My question is -- oh, I'm so nervous, okay. Thank you for coming.
THE PRESIDENT: You're doing great.
Q I just love you. Okay. Our class sizes are between 36 and 44. This is normal. I've been in the district for over 25 years. I have seen what our kids can do when someone cares. The Teacher of the Year also received a pink slip. We're talking about quality teachers being laid off because of something -- I don't know what. Tomorrow we have a meeting.
My real question is, you have put money towards retention. How are we going to make sure that money comes to our districts that need it the most, the urban districts? (Applause.)
Q I'm President of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, the umbrella organization for construction unions. I would like to thank you for your leadership on the stimulus package, and particularly for trying to get construction workers back to work.
But during the last eight years, the administration chose not to enforce the Davis-Bacon requirements, chose not to enforce wage and hour conditions, and many thousands of workers were denied the wages that they were legally entitled to. What can your administration do to make sure that people get the wages that they're entitled to in this terrible economic downturn?
Q Since American taxpayers have had to bail out a lot of large banks -- Citibank, et cetera -- and they don't feel they've gotten any benefit for themselves, do you support caps on interest rates that the same companies we have bailed out with our money can charge regular consumers on credit cards? Because it's up to 30 and 40 percent. (Applause.)
Q Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. Last October I lost my job after 13 years. I was laid off. Now when I look for a job, people tell me that I have a felony from 20 years ago -- I can't get no work. I have a family to support. What do I do?
That’s America, folks. And those are the American people. At least, they’re far more representative of the population as a whole and its daily concerns than those elites who have a voice in the media circus.
If you’re one of the organizers and workers that has knocked on doors before, you already know it.
And if you’ll be knocking on doors this weekend, we’d like to hear about your experiences, and what real people tell you, here. In fact, I’ll extend an invitation here to any canvasser that wants to write about your experiences door-knocking this weekend to submit a guest post to The Field. Send it to narconews@gmail.com and I’ll consider making you blogger for a day here. Because here at The Field, we understand that listening to the people is far more important than talking at them or claiming to speak for them. One can’t even begin to do the latter until he and she has taken the first step: to seek people out where they live and work. And to listen.
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The thing is that most
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by valdivia (not verified)The thing is that most people are confusing 'paying attention' to AIG (hwo can they not? it has been on the news non stop!) with being outraged about it. Two different things no? And also wanting the money back does not equate seeing Obama and Geithner as being in the pocket of the wheeler deelers (I am looking at you Krugman).
I am not in my city this weekend but will try to tag a long with some friends since i had signed up to go door to door but work sent me away last minute.
Thanks again Al for the island of sanity.
Thanks again AL
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by MK (not verified)Al,
Once again, you have articulated my EXACT thoughts about the disconnect between the elites and the rest of us.
I will be canvassing on the southside of Chicago on Saturday and I will definitely share my thoughts about how that goes. What I know for sure is that so many of the people like Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown and the rest of the folks that I am seeing on cable cannot and have never related to my life. I am struggling to raise a family, put food on my table, and keep my family's healthcare. I am counting on President Obama's agenda being successful and being implemented. I will continue to work to make that a reality. The election was only the beginning of a long hard fight.
Al, You're My New Favorite Blogger!
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by Media Maimonides (not verified)The navelgazosphere pundits need as many reality, and accountability, checks as the Beltway punits.
Hope these townhalls continue
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by nepat (not verified)These townhalls are incredibly valuable (can you imagine GWB doing this?). Real people asking real questions cannot be undervalued. I'm sure scheduling these things is not easy, but it allows the administration to skip right over the heads of the pundits. Very effective.
I also wanted to add some perspective on the chattering classes who we all, from time to time, mistakenly believe are some kind of manifestation of the vox populi. February averages for the major cable news networks (in primetime):
Morning Joe is around 436,000 viewers and Chris Matthews had about 866,000.
To net that out: peanuts! SpongeBob has a bigger audience than all the cable news programs combined. If you spend all your waking hours trafficking in cable news swill it's easy to see why AIG bonuses represent some kind of Armageddon. The total cable news audience is less than 1.5% of the population. There's no need to take these folks seriously. Ever.
And if that doesn't convince anyone, I have two final words: Rod Blagojevich. Remember cable news' last feeding frenzy? Where's Blagojevich now?
What a timely post, Al
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by TS (not verified)At Gibbs' press conference, an OUTRAGED reporter just told Gibbs that this White House seems to have a knack for underestimating the public's OUTRAGE!!!
You know, it sickens me that these people claim their looking out for me. It sickens me that these people get paid to be so damn wrong! I don't have a degree, I wait tables. I talk to people from all walks of life about all kinds of stuff 5 damn days a week. No one is talking about AIG and who knew what when and who's covering up what. Give me a break. When these folks talk poiltics or whatever, they talk about jobs, their rent being raised, the price of groceries, how they can't make it to PTA meetings cause they can't get off work to keep up with their child's school. I haven't heard diddly squat about AIG.
These people live in a damn bubble and they get paid a shit load of money and don't even know what's going on. I can't stand it.
Obama is bringing us the message
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by We Won't get fooled again (not verified)In Townhall's, on Leno, through the internet, just so we can hear it from the POTUS' mouth, not through the MSM filter.
Takin' it to the streets is what is needed. Reaching the real America with real Citizens, sharing real stories. No poutrage from me, I remember what it's like to go without and I understand the fear people have for their livelihoods and way of life.
I've never been a big fan of fear mongering. Present the facts and a solution, we have both, now let's sell it to those that don't.
Why the media keep getting it wrong about Obama...
Submitted on March 20th, 2009 by Tribunus Plebis (not verified)On Politico today there was a good example of how the media systematically "misunderestimate" Barack Obama: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20254.html This article piles on the supposed evidence of how President Obama is allegedly overexposed, focusing on the venues of his appearances, his "branding" or his style -- while entirely missing the cumulative content of what he is communicating. One consultant was quoted as being skeptical about Obama "betting the success of his policies so heavily on the strength of his personality," as if the President was merely engaged in a series of personal performances. Just as they did throughout 2008 during the campaign, when the political press corps and their media-consultant talking heads continually criticized Obama for supposedly too-theatrical mass rallies and repetitive, boring town-hall meetings, they are paying far too much attention to the external aspects of his appearances and virtually no attention to what he is actually saying. The public doesn't merely see a presidential candidate or a president, it also listens to what's being said. On the Jay Leno show last night, Obama gave affable, concise, easily understandable but quite substantive answers to Leno's surprisingly numerous questions about the financial and economic problems facing the country. This was 20 minutes of pure, clear content, unfiltered by the disputatious egos and tendentious attitudes of White House pool reporters and political pundits, and it reached 15 million households. It was brilliant political television. We are dealing with an entirely new kind of president, for a new, far more serious time in our nation's life. The people get it. The media mavens don't.
more than one thing at a time
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Observer (not verified)"It would be nice -- it would be nice if I could just pick and choose what problems to face and when to face them, and say, no, I'm sorry, hold off on health care; Afghanistan, let's put that aside for a while. You know, I would sleep a little easier. But that's not the way it works. It doesn't work that way for you. It doesn't work that way for you -- you don't get to choose between paying your mortgage bills or your medical bills."
"You don't get to choose between paying your kids' tuition and saving enough for retirement. You don't get to say, well, I'm sorry, hold on a second, you know, I really got to take on some issues at home here so I don't think I'm going to go to work for a week. It would be nice to do, but you don't do that. You need to take all these problems on. And you need a government that's going to help you on all these problems, that will do the same. That's what leadership is all about. (Applause.)"
----
Jim Jontz, a great American and great organizer (who was a pretty darn good member of Congress in his day and won consistently in a tough central Indiana district) told me, "What every election is about to the average voter is a single question: does this guy care about people like me?"
Obama genuinely does, and he's very good at getting that across. I think he does the town hall format a lot better than those somewhat stale Youtube fireside chats. Not only that, it's a part of accountability and rebuilding the trust of voters in our country. Which is a really important part of fixing the problems we have.
I have to add one more thought.
This is a unique moment. For the first time in my life, I honestly look forward to what my president has to say. Not just because of his empathy with voters, but because it's connected to a practical view of causes and trends and what has to be done to address the lives of actual people. What a change from the lofty but empty platitudes of politics and especially the jingoism, empty promises, lies and appeals to fear of the last generation, not just from the George W. Bush administration, the Republican Party and the neoconservatives, but also from a good many Democrats, the mediasphere and our so-called leaders of every persuasion.
Gardens and Diplomacy
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Elizabeth DuvertAnd all the nattering while FLOTUS begins a garden on the White House lawn and POTUS extends a hand to Iran. Yet all we hear are the politicos and pundits yakking about nothing. Thanks, Al. You continue to amaze me and make me hope enough folks are awake enough to cut the nattering off.
Rolling back baby bush
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Tien Le (not verified)Does anyone know if all the last minute exective orders baby bush made have been dealt with yet?
Agenda setting 101
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Bill ConroyThis whole AIG flap is really about something deeper as I see it. And it's not about what the vast swath of America considers important, though the outcome will determine whether that matters going forward in many ways.
To me, this is a showdown between the agenda-setting power of the MSM and the agenda-setting power of the president. If the former wins, what the people think doesn't matter, because Congress [which has the power, supposedly in the interest of the people] will act as it has so many times before in the interest of whatever assures their grip on power, which is precisely what the MSM agenda-setting engine seeks to influence.
If Obama wins, then it is his agenda that will be advanced, and to the extent his agenda represents the interests and concerns of the people, then the people's interests are advanced.
The AIG bonuses are the proxy over which this agenda-setting battle is being fought. And it won't be the last proxy media war on this front. The real threat to the MSM agenda-setting power is the fact that Obama plans, in large part, to bypass the MSM, through organizing at the grassroots level and various other nontraditional approaches [some of which pit parts of the MSM against each other, ie., Leno vs. the NYT, or insert MSM outlet] to press his agenda.
And the new kid on the block in all of this is blogland, particularly those who have been anointed as the exaulted voices of that new media landscape. [I always wonder, anointed by whom? Look at who is hosting or otherwise funding their blogs for clues on that front.]
The leaders of this blogger bourgeois class in many cases also exhibit an arrogance that betrays their obsession with exercising a self-indulgent media-setting agenda that is disassociated, to a large degree, from the concerns of the masses they purport to represent.
Of course these pundits — whether MSM or blogger bourgeois — are out of touch, and they don't care for the most part because they enjoy, or at least seek, the privilege and the power that comes with being able to set the agenda. And for the past 40-plus years, most presidents have been out of touch, living in a bubble themselves, disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of the common folks. [And of course I'm speaking of broad patterns here. Clearly, there are alternatives to all of this in both blogland and the MSM that are striving to connect with authentic democracy, and who may yet prove to be the the wildcards who play key roles in changing the game.]
As it stands now, though, the people have never really had a true, or at least viable, agenda-setting power in this process for decades.
Maybe that is changing. Regardless, its all very fascinating.
Great canvass today for OFA
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Stillforo (not verified)Hi Al, just wanted to share my experience with the OFA Pledge Project. I went out with a friend at canvassed at the Staten Island Ferry. It was a great experience. In a little over two hours, we received 45 pledges from a very diverse group of folks. To give you a little perspective, I live in Staten Island, NY--the only borough to vote for John McCain during the general election and a has a long history of voting Republican. I am very surprised at how successful we were.
My experience tells me that your post is right on target, that the American people's concerns do not mirror the fodder of the news media. The best part was that people walked up to to me, because they saw the President's face on my clipboard, and asked what I was doing there. They were very supportive and were happy to finally have answer to 'What do we do now?"
I did have one person come up to me and tell me that Obama is a 'socialist' and 'hates capitalism.' If that's the Repubs main argument, then it's pretty weak! It was a great day and I feel very energized! Hope everyone else had as nice a time as I did.
Went Canvassing Today
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Peter Fraser (not verified)I just got back from Pledge-Drive Canvassing and it was
great to be out in the neighborhood door-belling again. It
had a slightly different feel than during the campaign (and
I had to catch myself saying the "Obama Campaign"), but
I was able to get 8 people to sign the pledge, out of 46 doors
knocked on, and to know that those 8 voices are a small part
of a movement to speak louder than the lobbyists, and corporate
media was so encouraging to me. Here's a link to the group that
we've but together here in the northwest to help change our
country: www.piercecountyforchange.org
Thanks everyone!
Spot on Bill Conroy
Submitted on March 21st, 2009 by Anne CrumptonObama's meme of "responsibility" is part of the total package. He calls on each person to become involved, be responsible for self, and to reach out to the entire community. That is the anthesis of past top dogs whose meme has been "I know best - trust me - don't worry your pretty little head."
Power battles have been going on forever. I think it is a different kind of power battle going on now. I hear this President saying each individual has power to make choices. Let us listen to each other. Let us respect each other. Then let us find common areas of agreement where we can work together to BE the best we can be. Quite a switch. No wonder those who think power belongs to them, and them alone, are reacting strongly.
On the other hand, for too long to many have sat back and kept quiet. They too have to learn it is safe to speak their voice. For too long, individual power [and responsibility] has been given away to those with the loudest voice. I suggest a mantra of "listen and learn."