"Maybe we don't know what we're talking about," said Joe Scarborough after reading the latest Gallup poll and seeing that Americans don't seem fooled by the cynicism of Republican intransigence. But it's actually much worse than that. We're one month into a new administration, which is to say that we're still almost two years from the next election. And Scarborough is still judging winners and losers against Gallup survey results. But why? Everyone agrees that the popularity of the stimulus only matter in late 2010, when voters will be assessing whether to punish or reward its advocates. And everyone, or most everyone, agrees that the stimulus will be assessed based on the state of the economy, which is to say, based on how well it worked to blunt the pain of recession. If there was ever a time for political shows to cover policy as if it mattered, this would be it. But instead, Scarborough suggests that his show has been a simmering vat of ignorance because it hasn't been sufficiently attentive to polling that everyone agrees is meaningless. It's testament to the sorry state of cable news that even when they humbly admit ignorance, they can't even manage to tie their confession to the correct subject.
