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In what world does Blanche Lincoln's sort of "independence" leave anyone "smiling"? Apparently after watching this hackery, it does in CNN's Rick Sanchez's world. Sanchez and Gloria Borger have a nice little pity party for Senator Blanche Lincoln and do their best to paint her as being beaten up by extremists on both sides.

Since when is someone who's taking all kinds of corporate money and voting like a Republican make them either "independent" or a "centrist"? Borger and Sanchez should be ashamed of themselves for this segment. ConservaDem Lincoln has been acting in the interest of her campaign contributors and not the interest of the party she is supposed to belong to or the interest of her constituents. Sadly who she's taking money from and how that might be affecting her votes is too much to ask either Sanchez or Borger to point out.

SANCHEZ: Let me show you something else because the Democrats have their own problems. Look at Blanche Lincoln. This is Blanche Lincoln's ad. She's a Dem. And if you study the ad -- folks, I am going to play this for you. Watch to see how many times President Obama comes up in the ad. And tell me if she doesn't come off sounding more like a conservative than a progressive or a liberal. Play it, Rog.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINCOLN: I'm Blanche Lincoln and I want to show you what it's like in Washington these days. And your tax dollars? This is why I voted against giving more money to Wall Street, against the auto company bailout, against the public option health care plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: She's voting against everything that could possibly increase your taxes, and there is no mention in that ad of, "I support the president" or let's do health care reform. You know, I'm sorry, but I'm looking at that thing and I'm thinking, she's sounding more conservative than she is progressive or liberal or whatever you want to call it.

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The Republican Party is pulling the strings behind the tea parties but protesters still have some things in common with Democrats, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The Republican Party directs a lot of what the tea party does, but not everybody in the tea party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, astroturf, as opposed to grassroots," Pelosi told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas Sunday.

"We share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C," Pelosi continued.

"So, common ground with Nancy Pelosi and tea party movement?" asked Vargas.

"Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters. Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests and many tea partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose," explained Pelosi.

The Poor Man Institute: Oops I killed you

Jed Report: Rep. Steve King to Conservatives: 'Implode' IRS offices

Majikthise: Anything For A Buck Dept: Pulitzer and Emmy winning writers hire out to Scientology Church to investigate reporters who wrote critical stories about the 'church'

OurFuture: Five former Treasury Secretaries endorse Volker Rule

Washington Monthly: Who broke America's jobs machine?

Democratic Strategist: The not-so-independents

At least there's some good news as far as messaging goes. As you know, I hated the Citizens United ruling, and it appears that most of America feels the same way.

Obama raised eyebrows at his State of the Union address last month by criticizing the high court’s ruling throwing out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns. Turns out he’s got company: Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 80 percent of Americans likewise oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it, an unusually high intensity of sentiment.

Seventy-two percent, moreover, support the idea of a legislative workaround to try to reinstate the limits the court lifted.

The bipartisan nature of these views is striking in these largely partisan times. The court’s ruling is opposed, respectively, by 76, 81 and 85 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats; and by 73, 85 and 86 percent of conservatives, moderates and liberals. Majorities in all these groups, ranging from 58 to 73 percent, not only oppose the ruling but feel strongly about it.

Even among people who agree at least somewhat with the Tea Party movement, which advocates less government regulation, 73 percent oppose the high court’s rejection of this particular law. Among the subset who agree strongly with the Tea Party’s positions on the issues – 14 percent of all adults – fewer but still most, 56 percent, oppose the high court in this case.

I like the idea that the country is understanding that our legislative branch can try to overcome this problem even though it's not an easy task to accomplish. I think outside of the partisan right, most Americans understand that when corporations have the ability to pump in or threaten to pump in gobs of money to influence the political process, it's a distortion of that process -- and it just plain smells.

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Monica Crowley was eager to change the subject on The O'Reilly Factor last night when Alan Colmes brought up the naked racism of Tom Tancredo's Tea Party Convention speech, so she launched into a defense of the Tea Parties with facts and information seemingly taken straight from her posterior:

Crowley: Look, the Tea Party movement is a massive grass-roots movement. It is based on legitimate concerns about out-of-control spending, high taxes --

O'Reilly: But to address Colmes' point, that the way they presented themselves, in Colmes' opinion, helped President Obama.

Crowley: No, absolutely not. I'll tell you why. Um, President Obama doesn't seem to be listening to what the Tea Party -- and it's not just the Tea Party movement.

Remember, a big majority of the Tea Party movement are made up of conservatives. But you have a number of -- and a huge number of mainstream moderate Democrats in this movement, and a huge number of independents --

O'Reilly: Libertarians, OK. So you -- was it a neutral? Was the Tea Party neutral toward President Obama? Did it hurt him? Did it help him?

Crowley: Bill, I think -- no, no, actually, I think it hurts Obama. It hurts Obama because they've got the mainstream message. The majority of Americans now are siding with the Tea Party movement on the issues of spending deficits and debt.

A huge number of Democrats? I haven't seen any polls showing anything more than insignificant number of Democrats joining the Tea Parties -- in no small part because their rallies are endless and vicious rants against Democrats and liberals. It's possible Crowley has data to back up her claim, but count me among the doubters, given my experience at Tea Party events, which are uniformly right-wing affairs.

Crowley's claims about the Tea Parties' supposed popularity doesn't exactly match what voters actually think, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

Days after Sarah Palin headlined the nation's first Tea Party convention, a Rasmussen Reports poll released today shows that a generic "Tea Party candidate" would come in third in a theoretical three-way congressional contest.

The poll found that 36% of voters would support a Democratic candidate on a generic ballot, 25% would back the Republican and 17% would go for the Tea Party pick. Twenty-three percent of respondents are undecided.

In early December, the same poll showed the Tea Party in second place and the GOP in third. Unchanged between the polls, according to Rasmussen, is that 41% of voters have a favorable view of the conservative movement.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken Feb. 7-8, just after the national Tea Party convention in Nashville. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It's possible the public agrees with the Tea Partiers on a couple of issues. But overall the movement is turning them off, because it's not just full of nutcases, it's being led by them.

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(26 days into the first term - still smiling)

Twenty-six days into his first term as President, Bill Clinton took to the airwaves and delivered a talk regarding his upcoming budget proposals (February 15, 1993). We tend to forget (or choose to just blot it out) what a mess everything was in when Clinton took office just a few weeks prior in January. The previous twelve years of Reagan era politics and voodoo economics took its toll on the country and pretending it didn't exist just wasn't going to happen.

Pres. Clinton: “The typical middle-class family is working harder for less. Despite the talk of a recovery, more than 9 million of our fellow citizens are still out of work. And as this chart indicates (pointing to chart), more than 3 million Americans would already be back at work by now. In fact, there are more jobless people now than at what the experts call ‘the bottom’ of this recession. All during this last twelve years the deficit has roared out of control. The big tax cuts for the wealthy, the growth in government spending and soaring Healthcare costs all caused the Federal deficit to explode. Our debt is now four times as big as it was in 1980.”

Of course the Republicans under the leadership of Bob Dole had a different take in their rebuttal.

Sen. Minority Leader Bob Dole: “The election year message from Republicans and Democrats and Independents and the supporters of Ross Perot is clear; no more Partisan games, no more budget charades, you want results. And so do I. Let me assure you the Republicans in Congress want to get the job done – we want to cooperate with President Clinton, to cut the cost of government and to slash the federal deficit.”

And we all know how that particular dance went . . .

If the president's speech seemed full of vague generalities and not the inspirational partisan battle cry you might have wanted, that's because the speech wasn't really aimed at us, but at independents. And in that light, it was a resounding success.

From Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling firm:

Democracy Corps conducted dial testing of the speech with 50 independent and weak partisan voters in Nevada, followed by focus group discussions with voters who shifted toward approval of Obama’s performance in office. This difficult audience for Obama was a heavily Republican-leaning group (46 percent Republican, 20 percent Democratic) that split their votes in 2008 (52 percent Obama, 46 percent McCain) but had moved away from him over the past year, with majorities expressing disapproval with his job performance and unfavorable views of him on a personal level.

Obama saw a substantial, but not overwhelming, spike in his overall numbers with his personal favorability rating and job approval both increasing by 16 points. But his speech drove much bigger shifts among these initially skeptical swing voters on several key issues.

Most important, Obama managed to decisively reverse the view that he was too close to Wall Street. In a Democracy Corps survey from just before the Massachusetts election, we found that a 49 to 41 percent plurality said Obama and Democrats were more concerned with bailouts for Wall Street than creating jobs for regular Americans. Entering the evening, swing voters in this group agreed with a 48 to 16 percent plurality saying Obama “puts Wall Street ahead of the middle class.” But after the speech, the number disagreeing with that statement jumped a remarkable 50 points, to 66 percent. Moreover, Obama saw a 38-point increase in support for his banking reform plan and a 40-point increase in the percent saying that he “stands up to special interests.” Obama’s strong words for the banks clearly resonated and generated some of the strongest scores on our dials of the night from Democrats, Republicans and independents.

[...] For these voters whose attitudes shifted from disapproval to approval of Obama’s performance as president, one consistent question remained: can he deliver? Unlike most attributes that shifted during the speech, “promises things that sound good but won’t be able get them done” remained very high (78 percent pre-speech to 74 percent post-speech). The “shifters” in these post-speech focus groups are waiting for results, and they pointed specifically to passing health care reform and job creation initiatives as critical reforms that must be delivered. While they see the Republicans as obstructing every Obama initiative, they nonetheless expect Democrats to pass major legislation with their large majorities.

Among their findings:

* While everyone had a strong negative response to the banking bailout, the Democrats hated it even more.

* The strongest positive response was a 99 from both Democrats and independent on the idea of removing tax breaks for businesses who outsource jobs.

* There was an 80% positive response on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

You can always count on Evan Bayh to act like a typical gutless conservaDem. As usual, he draws the wrong lessons from the loss in Massachusetts and takes his cues from Fox and David Broder.

What is the lesson of Massachusetts – where Democrats face the prospects of losing a Senate seat they’ve held since 1952? For Senator Bayh the lesson is that the party pushed an agenda that is too far to the left, alienating moderate and independent voters.

“It’s why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said. “They just don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That’s something that has to be corrected.”

Bayh pointed that it’s not just Massachusetts. Independents also rejected Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia in November. “ The only we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates,” Bayh said. “Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country -- that’s not going to work too well.”

How about this lesson: If the Senate hadn't bowed down to the almighty health-insurance industry and come up with a decent health-care bill that excited the Democratic base, maybe Massachusetts voters would have come out in droves and honored the legacy of Teddy Kennedy.

That's backed up by a poll just released of those voters from Democracy for America:

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT "DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH"

* by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
* by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home

(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

* 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
* 86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

* 57% of Brown voters say Obama "not delivering enough" on change he promised
* 49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

Now the final phase begins, where we see what House liberals can achieve within the confines of a broken system that gives a handful of senators from sparsely populated states a disproportionate power to shape legislation:

Democrats are already outlining a strategy to achieve a final compromise that can satisfy the more liberal House without upsetting the painstakingly assembled coalition of 60 Senate Democrats and independents.

Central to those talks, House leaders said, will be the search for an acceptable substitute for a government-run insurance plan that those without medical coverage could purchase, a provision the House designed to compete with private insurers and force them to rein in costs. While the Senate has decisively rejected the "public option," House leaders say they will demand other concessions to ensure that Americans can afford the insurance they will be required to buy if the bill becomes law.

[...] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has signaled approval for the Senate's solution: the creation of at least two nationwide insurance plans run by private companies but overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, the same federal agency that handles health insurance for members of Congress. In a conference call Wednesday, Pelosi also assured rank-and-file Democrats that they would not be asked to rubber-stamp the Senate bill and began soliciting ideas to improve it.

Among the options under discussion: pressing the Senate to increase the federal subsidies that would be offered to low- and middle-income people who do not have access to affordable coverage through an employer; having a single national marketplace for people buying insurance, rather than 50 state-based exchanges, as the Senate prefers; and moving up the launch date of those marketplaces and subsidies to 2013, one year earlier than under the Senate bill.

The Villagers obsess about the mythical "independent" voters. This time we have Tweety and his crew discussing over and under fifty five year old crowd. And guess where they stand.