Not that it’s even remotely a surprise that our many low-information voters aren’t familiar with the federally-backed and subsequently failed solar-panel manufacturer and that they don’t tend to keep up with the minutiae of such sagas of epic government failure, but Solyndra is just so thoroughly representative of the utter hubris of the federal government picking economic winners and losers and presuming to know what’s good for us, that the actual numbers are like a dagger straight to my heart. From The Hill:

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 58 percent of registered voters are unaware or unsure of the company, which went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving an Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009 to manufacture advanced solar panels.

Twenty-five percent of respondents had a negative view of Solyndra, 15 percent were neutral and just 2 percent held a positive view on the subect, according to the survey conducted in late September. …

The company’s collapse in late August of 2011, which put more than 1,000 people out of work, was an embarrassment for the White House. Obama had personally visited Solyndra in 2010 to cast it as an example of the emerging green economy.

Notice that of the respondents who did say they were aware of Solyndra’s story, pretty much nobody claimed to have a positive view of the affair. It can be tough to break off from the herd when our everyday lives are so roundly and subliminally infiltrated with “green-is-always-and-necessarily-good” vibes from so many sources (which is exactly what the Obama administration is preying upon, by the way), but I can’t help feeling that if more voters were aware of, maybe not even Solyndra specifically, but of more of the consequences of the Obama administration’s generally blasé attitude towards our tax dollars, all these presidential polls wouldn’t be quite so dang close.