Nate Silver wrote a post last night flagging an AARP poll, the upshot of which is that Americans don’t seem to have any idea what the ‘public option’ even is. As Silver notes, the fact that only 37% of respondents correctly identified what the ‘public option’ was, and the fact that respondents were only given three options, shows that random guessing would have produced pretty much the same result.
As I said yesterday, the fact that ‘public option’ is so un-descriptive and opaque has only made it easier for Republicans to portray it as some sort of program for mass euthanasia. So I’m not sure what there is to say here or do but laugh because the only other thing to do is cry.
But it does make you wonder why Democrats go into these political battles with dopey wonk-speak when Republicans are coming up with stuff like “death panels”, which, despite being a complete fantasy, does tend to focus the attention.
