Buyer's Remorse, Continued

Per the Associated Press poll released today, the public's feelings of which party is more trustworthy on seven key issues (the economy, national security, health care, the deficit, taxes, creating jobs, and immigration) have swung toward the Democrats by an average of 6.7 net points since mid-October, as well as 7.3 net points since mid-September and 4.4 net points since mid-November. The October poll being the last pre-election poll, though, it's the one that I'm focused on. Because the Republicans won the generic congressional ballot by 6.8%, 51.6% to 44.8%. Applying a 6.7% net shift toward the Democrats gets us to, well, a dead heat. And pre-election forecasters were suggesting that a tie on the generic congressional ballot would tend to keep the Democrats in control of the House. So it strikes me as a reasonable inference that, according to this poll, the Democrats would have kept the House if the climate of today had been prevalent in November. Just sayin'. (Also, Boehner's favorability down five net points since November, mostly his unfavorables shooting upward four points. Watch for that trend to continue.)

UNRELATED: I like the title "Together We Thrive" of the memorial service tonight. It strikes me as a neat play on "united we stand." It corrects the two flaws of the typical statement, though, I think: first, the word "united" conveys a certain lack of disagreement, and when Republicans said it I always thought that it was an attempt to argue that anyone who criticized them was hurting the country; second, "united we stand" could be read as a statement of current fact rather than a conditional, as in, we stand united, whereas it actually is part of a whole phrase that includes the flipside of the coin, "divided we fall." Together We Thrive is first of all most emphatically an assertion that if we are together then we thrive, not that we are necessarily currently meeting this criterion at present, and it also does not imply that "unity" is required to achieve the good result, but just "togetherness," which I think is a standard that allows for much more disagreement and rancor. It's kind of like the idea of a loyal opposition, that you can disagree, vehemently, and even perhaps get rancorous and shout things like "Shame!" from the back benches of Westminster Hall, but still be loyal to the country.

Speaking of which, that gives me an idea for my next post.