Are You Better Off With Media Like This?

In what will apparently be a concerted Rethug effort at the Democratic convention and in the following weeks, you should be prepared to hear "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" over and over from Rethuglican pols and their media enablers.

The stenographers in the Beltway "mainstream media" have already received this Rethuglican talking point and have begun to do their part. Is it a fair question? As Dean Baker notes,

"Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, 'is the house in better shape than when you got here?'

"Yes, that would be a really ridiculous question. Hence George Stephanopoulos was being absurd when he posed this question to David Plouffe, a top political adviser to President Obama on ABC's This Week. Bob Schieffer was being equally silly when he asked Martin O’Malley, the Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the same question on CBS's Face the Nation.

"A serious reporter asks the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. [snip]

"Similarly, serious reporters would ask whether the stimulus was large enough, was it well-designed, and were there other measures that could have been taken..."

But, as we know, people like George Steponaflagpinopoulos are only interested in flogging the latest meme coming out of the Rethuglican spin machine. Whether through laziness, thinking they have to "dumb down" for their audience, herd mentality, Rethug leanings, or sheer incompetence, look for this question to be the next "you didn't build that" Rethug talking point to be recycled endlessly by the credulous media.

BONUS: Here's TPM's take on how the Dems might counter this line of attack.