Digby: Deep Insight Redux

I have posted dispatches over the last few months from a friend I call "Deep Insight" who has worked for many years in Democratic politics and has a keen sense of the lay of the land. (If I had known he was going to send this I probably wouldn't have bothered with my own, somewhat meandering post below). Anyway, here's what he sent me today on the state of the presidential race:

“We think electability is the Number 1 issue.”
George Stephanopolous’

This is certainly the media’s agenda. It is all personality politics and tactics rather than issues for this crowd. The media assumes what the GOP fall attacks will be and then introduces them to the public as “journalism.” No need to change the narrative, just replay the Nixon era debates. It is 1969, and here is the SDS.

Meanwhile, the economy is headed south into a recession. Unemployment is on the rise, as is inflation. Ninety percent of Americans think the economy is “not good or poor.” Ten percent of Ohioans are now on food stamps and the number of Americans nationwide on stamps has just set a record. This is the first time an economic expansion has ended and median family income is lower now than it was at the onset. Eighty-one percent of Americans think the country is on the “wrong track,” another record. By a 20-point margin over Iraq, the economy is now cited as the number one issue by voters.