Hillary's support for the suspension of the Federal gas tax is just as cynical as your typical GOP economic argument. We KNOW it won't do much for the people who need help, all it will do is help her with what Jonathan Chait or John Dean would call "low-information voters" or "casual voters," as The Carpetbagger points out:
As for the political implications, Jonathan Chait, after conceding that “betting on the intelligence of the American public is a bad move,” argues that Obama’s principled, reality-based position is a political winner. I’m not so sure. What we’re likely to see is a split — high-information, well-informed voters who see the Clinton-McCain proposal as crass pandering, and low-information voters who never hear about the evidence and falsely believe a gas-tax holiday might put a few extra bucks in their pocket.
Clinton seems to hope there are just enough people in the latter group who’ll buy into the nonsense and give her a political boost.
It’s cynical politics at its most disappointing. Worse, since low-information voters vastly outnumber high-information voters, this demagoguery might even work.
The HOPE that Obama represents is that we can get away from this kind of disinformation.
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