Shut Them Out

Shut Them Out:

The Politico reports:

President Obama's back is against the wall, so he's getting in touch with his inner Agnew, hitting the neo-nattering nabobs of cable and the net.

“If we could just -- excuse the press -- turn off the cameras," he told Democratic Senators at their annual retreat. "Turn off your CNN, your FOX, your MSNBC, your blogs, turn off this echo chamber … where the topic is politics. … We’ve got to get out of the echo chamber.

Why would this be so important to his agenda? Well, stories like this one.

With the developments in Illinois and Indiana over the past 24 hours, the Cook Political Report now carries 10 Democratic-held seats in their most competitive categories -- meaning, theoretically, that if Republicans ran the table (and lost none of their own toss up seats in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio) they could get to 51 seats and the Senate majority.

Also this one, which demonstrates that a key myth that members of the Democratic Congress have been telling themselves is false: passing health care won't save them in November. That's got to be discouraging.

The fear that reality might scare people out of 'voting the right way' may not be all that's in play. Consider this poll, and confer it with this one from before the election.

What we see in every case is that Democrats, and also groups likely to vote democratic in disproportionate levels, have less actual knowledge about the world.

That may be a correlation, not a causation; but just in case, I can see why the President wouldn't want to take the chance!