NP: iTunes Genius Mix: BritPop & Rock

So, I see terrible poll numbers for Sarah Palin pegging her maximum support on electability at 30% and a story about specifically how the 25% of so of Americans who aren't insured by their employers and don't qualify for Medicaid get royally screwed by the current health insurance system, and I think to myself, "why does the first group of people get such disproportionate coverage relative to its size, while the second gets less?"

Part of this may be the explanation I flagged from Nate Silver a while ago, that the fringier parts of political spectrum simply get more attention than they used to in the current media environment, but I think there's also an obvious function of noise. Note that, in a recent Chicago appearance to support Mark Kirk, Palin's running mate John McCain said "I continue to be entertained now by the continuous historical attacks on Sarah Palin, who was very, very popular with a significant segment of the American people."

I could point out the use of the word "was" in there, but the bigger thing is that it's a "significant" segment, which is wholly different from being a "large" segment. Why are they significant, exactly? Because they're very, very loud, and end up on cable news every five to ten minutes complaining about something? Unfortunately, that's probably it, and since cable news is where all these perceptions get reinforced by the news junkies that watch it all day, the exaggeration of this segment becomes a vicious news cycle. Andrew Sullivan flags an analysis from Pollster.com that shows most Americans actually know little at best about the Tea Party movement. And yet, they get so much coverage that you would think they're taking over.

Meanwhile, that 25% of people who are in the crucible of the health care reform debate aren't aligned with the goals of a major news organization or any special interests, so they're effectively shut out. There also seems to be a bit of a "What's the matter with Kansas?" phenomenon at work here, where the people who need health care reform have been thoroughly convinced (the most charitable term I could come up with) to side with those who are trying to kill it.

All this being said, I don't know how you change this dynamic. Squeaky wheels always get the grease, and the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin supporters seem to be the squeakiest by a wide margin. It's not that they're wrong, or that they aren't entitled to their opinions, it's just that they get such a disproportionate amount of airtime in the "debate."

Deep down, I still hope that the White House is letting that wheel squeak while driving the car -- to extend the metaphor -- to where we need to be, so once we're there, the complainers will realize they've moved in the right direction, and respond accordingly. That's been my assessment of Obama's view of the 2012 election for a while now, and I'm not sure that anything's happened to modify it.