New Orleans The Wall Street Journal did a Bus
iness Roundtable of sorts, and one thing should have been enough to scare the stuffing (a sop to Thanksgiving, ok?) out of the business community if they bothered to read it. Journal reporter, Matt Murray, talked to Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster, and Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster. In a throw away comment at the end of the interview, Hart may have not only explained more about why something like the Tea-People and their Tea Party caucus are on the rise, but also why this may be the time for other bands to form and enter the lists.
The bottom line is the American people currently have lost confidence in everybody and don’t believe in s**t. They know who to blame, but the distrust and alienation is such that they don’t trust anyone out there now among the regular players, talking heads, and standard institutions unless their lives depend on it. The numbers also explain why there is a total mind meld between the left and right now on the issue of free trade with both looking to tighten it down in a reaction against globalization for various reasons.
Here’s what they said:
Who’s to Blame
MR. MURRAY: Who do people blame for that alienation? Business, government, everybody?
MR. HART: It’s all institutions. In the exit polls, first and foremost they named Wall Street and business, I think it was something like 35%. Second was the Bush administration, and third was the Obama administration.
But of those who said the business community, they voted more Republican than Democratic, so go figure. What it really comes back around to is we’ve lost confidence in every single institution. The only institutions that sort of remain are the military, firefighters, paramedics, that kind of thing.
But you look at the news media, you look at the business community, you look at banking and you look at Wall Street, it’s now about 10% confidence. It used to be 40%, 50%, 70%. A lot of this has to do with a sense of, who’s fighting for me and who understands where I’m at?
