Chart of the Day: Public Blames GOP for Fiscal Cliff by 2:1 Margin

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A new Pew-Washington Post poll puts the GOP’s fiscal cliff problem in stark terms:

The Post site has a tool that lets you look at various demographic subgroups, and it turns out that everyone would blame Republicans. I figured maybe old people would blame Obama instead. Nope. Southerners? Nope. White people? Nope? High-income people? Nope. Literally the only group that didn’t blame Republicans was….Republicans.

Politically speaking, President Obama’s main job is to keep things this way. Republicans pay a price for their anti-tax jihad only if the public blames them for the ensuing catastrophe. But if Obama sticks to reasonable asks—modest tax increases, modest spending cuts, and a debt ceiling increase—and pounds away at Republican intransigence, these numbers aren’t likely to shift much.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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