During my morning grounpound, I encountered a perfectly normal-looking woman as I approached the center of town. She was dressed for work and had no indicia of being a nutcase.
As our paths crossed, she stopped, looked me in the eye and pointed over her shoulder towards the main intersection in town. She said, very angrily, “Why the hell are they digging up that sidewalk? They dug it up and replaced it just a few months ago. It’s probably just to give that contractor money. It’s a bunch of political bullshit, is what it is!â€
I nodded and continued on my way around the corner. And, sure enough, they were tearing up what had looked to me (I walk there most days) to be a perfectly good bit of sidewalk. The point of this is not to speculate as to why they might have been replacing a large section of sidewalk (there may have been a perfectly good reason), but rather to focus on the reaction of a seemingly not-at-all crazy person.
I remain more than a little puzzled. Was she just a partisan hack, who has a serious case of the ass with Obama and Democrats in general? The demographics would suggest otherwise. I live in one of the bluest of the Blue States in a very, very Blue town.
My impression was and remains that people like this lady are just damned tired of being treated like “subjects†or “walking ATMs.†by the government (democrats and republicans). This is consistent with the spirit of the recent Tea Parties, even though they were largely ignored or their participants derided by the members of the MSM.
Still, a recent poll shows that The One is still very popular, which causes me to wonder just who are the people being polled? I sense that there is a simmering discontent on the part of far more people than the media would have us believe. The groundpound lady was one of the many really pissed off people I see every day, and this is Blue Jersey, not Red Texas.
The administration would be wise not to pay so much attention to the polls, but rather to keep an eye on what appears to me to be something going on (i.e. a lot of really pissed-off people) that the pollsters may be missing.