This, from Andrew Sullivan, is just ... wrong:
The president's approval numbers have also taken a 5 point tumble over the last month. I wonder if his rather transparent deferral of courage to the GOP on the debt has anything to do with it. My own view is, unsurprisingly, un-Krugmanesque. If Obama seeks to win re-election by playing on fears about cuts in Medicare, he'll falter, because people know the crisis is real. Best to stick with the message of fairer debt reduction, shared sacrifice, and some real Medicare cost-cutting that doesn't simply rely on the bend-the-cost-curve experiments whose success is as yet unprovable. [Emphasis mine]
Here is some nifty data, in chart form, from the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll:
Normal people -- that is, the vast majority of Americans who aren't well-off political pundits -- aren't actually that concerned with the debt qua the debt. Insofar that debt has any resonance with the public, it's because of persistently high unemployment. This isn't hard to understand. When people are unemployed or feel financially insecure, they react against incumbent politicians as a matter of course. Simply put: The downward trend of Barack Obama's approval rating has more to do with joblessness and perceptions of economic improvement than it does with "the deficit," which to most Americans, is a complete abstraction.
