July 20, 2010
The Washington Post felt that it was important to tell readers that the stimulus was very unpopular in a working class Pennsylvania district. However, it did not point out that a main reason that it is unpopular is that voter confuse the stimulus with the TARP bank bailout, which the paper strongly supported.
According to the article:
“Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said disgust with the stimulus and anxiety about the deficit are ‘really a metaphor for wasteful government spending.’ From the perspective of many voters, ‘a lot of their money has gone out the door to bail out big banks and big corporations while their jobs have been lost.'”
This is a pretty direct statement that the TARP remains incredibly unpopular and that voters tend to confuse the stimulus with the TARP. A serious newspaper would have made this point. It is not that the voters object to measures that create jobs, they object to measures that hand banks money.
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