CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Bush would lose election this year

[Patrick M]

I have to ask the rhetorical question Ryan recently brought up: Where were you people a year ago?

Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year

(CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.

In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.

Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.

The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.

In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.

However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.

More than half, 57 percent, said they don't agree with the president's views on issues that are important to them, while 41 percent said their views are in alignment with those of Bush on important issues.
Democrats preferred on issues

On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).

Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.

In 2003, 53 percent said Republicans would better handle Iraq and only 29 percent believed the Democrats would do better.

The only issue on which Republicans came out on top was in fighting terrorism: 49 percent said the GOP is better at it, while 38 percent said the Democrats are.

And there was a dramatic shift downward in the latest poll, compared with September, in the percentage of people who said that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

This time, 49 percent said it was a mistake, versus 59 percent who felt that way last month.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/25/ ... index.html

[krabapple]

However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.

This is the most important .graf in the article, I'm afraid.

These polls do not show that Bush would lose.

[lukpac]

Well, 39-55 is well outside the margin, and that's the basis of the article, so I think they do show that.

As I said to Amy, though, a lot of good it does now...

[Rspaight]

The graf Krab quotes refers to the difference between the previous 39/58 disapproval/approval and the current 42/55 disapproval/approval, not the theoretical election result. That, as Luke says, is well outside the margin.

Bush has clearly squandered the "political capital" he crowed about after the election.

This caught my eye:

And there was a dramatic shift downward in the latest poll, compared with September, in the percentage of people who said that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

This time, 49 percent said it was a mistake, versus 59 percent who felt that way last month.

Constitution approval bounce?

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Speaking of polls, check this out:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm

Less than three-quarters of Republicans think Chimpy's doing a heckuva job.

From the whole pool, 44% strongly disapprove of his performance, with an additional 15% "somewhat" disapproving. 19% "somewhat" approve, and 22% strongly approve.

So twice as many Americans think he's crap than think he's great, with a third of the country in the mushy middle.

Can we have an election do-over?

Ryan

[the 801]

Can we have an election do-over?

Impeachment would be nice, but it'll never happen...

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

RALL 10/25/05

Cracks Appear in the Constitution

NEW YORK--The phone rings with a blocked caller ID but I know who it is. My friend the film critic has just put down the same article I've just finished reading, a front-page blockbuster in the New York Daily News. It says that George W. Bush knew about Karl Rove's scheme to blow CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover for years, that he was Rove's partner in treason from the start, that his claims of ignorance were lies. The News article is anonymously sourced but we know it's 100 percent true because the White House won't deny that Bush is a traitor.

"So they'll impeach him now, right?"

My friend asked the same thing in 2001 when recounts proved Bush lost Florida, when the 9/11 fetishist admitted that he'd never even tried to catch Osama, when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, and when his malignant neglect killed hundreds of Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"This means impeachment. Right?" Wrong.

Any one of Bush's crimes towers over the combined wickedness of Nixon and Clinton. And there are so many to choose from! How many times has Bush "made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States" (a key count in the Nixon impeachment)?

Stop laughing, you.

Unfortunately for my friend and the United States, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Nixon and Clinton faced Congresses controlled by the other party. Because Bush belongs to the same party as the majorities in the House and Senate, nothing he does can get him impeached.

Our failed Constitutional system means we're stuck with this disastrous demagogue for three more years. Gloat now, Republican readers, but party loyalty's stranglehold on impeachment can easily take the form of a complacent Democratic Congress overlooking the misdeeds of a batty Democratic president.

Any safe can be cracked; every system of safeguards breaks down eventually. We can't get rid of Bush because the Founding Fathers, who were smart enough to think of just about everything, dropped the ball when they drafted the article that provides for presidential impeachment. Because there were no national political parties back in 1787, their otherwise ingenious system of checks and balances failed to account for the possibility that a Congress might choose to overlook a president's crimes.

Small parties were active on the state and local level during the late 18th century, but James Madison, George Washington and most of the other Founders despised these organizations as harbingers of petty "factionalism" that ought to be banned or severely limited. Washington used the occasion of his 1796 farewell address to decry "the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration," he warned. "It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection...In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged." Voting blocs were the enemy of good government.

In the new republic, Madison wrote in his seminal Federalist No. 10, political arguments should be considered on their own merits. Since candidates for and holders of political office would be judged solely as individuals, Congressmen would focus on the greater good rather than political alliances when weighing whether to impeach a president. Even when parties began to emerge as a national force in 1800, few politicians would have argued that a Democratic-Republican president should be safe from impeachment unless the Federalist Party happened to control Congress.

Another Constitutional breakdown, concerning the separation of powers, occurred in June 2004. More than a year after the Supreme Court decided in Rasul v. Bush that the nearly 600 Muslim men and young boys being held incommunicado at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to have their cases heard by U.S. courts, they remain in cold storage--no lawyers, no court dates. The Bush Administration simply ignored the ruling.

"[Bush's] Justice Department," Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, "sees [the ruling] through the sophisticated legal prism known as the Toddler Worldview: Anything one doesn't wish to accept simply isn't true." Because the Founding Fathers never anticipated the possibility that the nation's chief executive would treat its final judgments with the respect due an out-of-state parking ticket issued to a rental car, the Supreme Court has been rendered as toothless as a gummy bear.

The more you look, the more you'll find that our Constitution has been subverted to the point of virtual irrelevance. The legislative branch has abdicated its exclusive right to declare war to the president, who was appointed by a federal court that undermined the states' constitutional right to manage and settle election disputes. Individuals' protection against unreasonable searches have been trashed, habeas corpus is a joke, and double jeopardy has become routine as those exonerated by criminal court face second trials in civil court. Our system of checks and balances has collapsed, the victim of a citizenry more interested in entertaining distraction than eternal vigilance.

Where evil men rule, law cannot protect those who sleep.

[David R. Modny]

Maybe, Bush himself wouldn't win again today. But, in my opinion, until the Progressive base re-educates the masses as to *why* Progressive values and goals are the same values and goals that most Americans live by and want...the GOP will win the Presidency again in 2008.

All the GOP has to do is put an attractive candidate on the ticket, sold as a "moderate," and the Bush administration's monumental ineptitude will quickly be forgotten. Conversely, a moderate Dem will always be branded a liberal by the machine. Thus, until the "L-Word" is shown to be something other than "evil"...we're doomed. It's time to quit trying to play their way and re-establish the reasons why Progressive leadership works. This won't be easy, but it's time to stand tall and get to work now.

That said, we might just benefit from the Bush Follies in the '06 mid-terms. Pity though...the fool, himself, can't run again this year and be held accountable for his actions. Rove might have been able to make the election of '04 more about two guys holding hands than about Bush's "leadership," but I think no snowjob could save his ass if the election were held today. Short of pulling Osama out of the hole, he's played all his henhouse trump cards. The truth -- as we knew it would be -- becomes exposed. The "great uniter" indeed...

"Lucky" us though, we're stuck with him for three more years.

[czeskleba]

It's easy for an anonymous, unnamed Democratic candidate to garner 55% in this poll, because you don't know what he's like or what he stands for, and anyone can just project their idealized "perfect candidate" traits onto him. An anonymous candidate has no negatives, and hasn't been attacked and vilified and obfuscated by the right wing media attack machine.

All this poll really indicates is that people are dissatisfied with Bush, not that they support any Democratic ideas or policies. And frankly, people were dissatisfied with Bush a year ago too... his approval rating was below 50% last year at the very point he was re-elected. A more interesting poll question would have been "If the election was held today, would you vote for George Bush or John Kerry?" You can bet Kerry would not receive 55% support. I'd say there'd be a good chance a majority of voters would indicate a preference for Bush even now.

The point being, as David said, having people be dissatisfied with the incompetence and malfeasance of the Republicans is only half the equation... until the Democrats figure out how to present themselves as a superior alternative, nothing good will come of it.

"Lucky" us though, we're stuck with him for three more years.

And sadly we'll be stuck with his legacies (mega deficits, Supreme Court picks, and increased chaos in the Mid East) for generations.

[David R. Modny]

And sadly we'll be stuck with his legacies (mega deficits, Supreme Court picks, and increased chaos in the Mid East) for generations.

So sad, but true. I really, in my heart, don't believe that the American public fully understood this (particularly the whole Supreme Court thing) when they voted for Bush in '04.

Instead, we had the bullshit marquee stories floated by Rove instead to occupy everyone's conversations.

I still believe on a good many social, rights and privacy issues, America as a whole stands to the left of center (gay marriage one exception...and considering when and how those polls were done...I'm not even so sure about that). It'll be interesting to see how they react when their freedoms are slowly whittled away.

[czeskleba]

I still believe on a good many social, rights and privacy issues, America as a whole stands to the left of center (gay marriage one exception

You may be right. I would bet that the majority of swing voters who voted Bush last year did so not because they support any of his domestic agenda, but simply because they were convinced he was better equipped to handle the war on terror. The failure of the Kerry campaign was in letting Bush convince voters that was the only issue that mattered, letting him convince them he was doing a good job on the issue, and in failing to articulate how they might do a better job. I wish the Democrats had gone with Wesley Clark... a military guy would have been best equipped to take Bush on about this. Oh well, water under the bridge.

[David R. Modny]

The failure of the Kerry campaign was in letting Bush convince voters that was the only issue that mattered, letting him convince them he was doing a good job on the issue, and in failing to articulate how they might do a better job. I wish the Democrats had gone with Wesley Clark... a military guy would have been best equipped to take Bush on about this. Oh well, water under the bridge.

Exactly. It's this very inarticulation that's been burning an ulcer into my stomach for most of the last 25 years. Clinton -- a mostly moderate Dem for that matter -- being the exception.

Clinton was able to get elected as a "new Democrat," a moderate DLC'er (and still branded a liberal of course) not because of *these* things but because of the following. He was exceptionally charasmatic. He *was* articulate in selling *himself* in ways the senior Bush could only dream of. Had enough ammo to work with (namely the economy) and *knew* how to capitalize on it. As I've said before, it's not enough these days for a Democrat to try and present himself as a "safe" moderate. I believe that short of finding the kind of electable superman again that Clinton was, the Dems need to find someone who can articulate Progressive leadership to the American public in a way that sells a complete ideological vision - not just pacifying the public...that's the Republican department. Clark would have done this, certainly on the global issues stage. Dean would have been able to probably do this on the domestic stage.

Kerry...couldn't even get past articulating who *he* was. Pity, because I still think he would have made a 1000 times better President than the guy in the Oval Office now.

David Modny

[czeskleba]

People vote for self interest. They voted for FDR because they felt his policies would help them when they needed help. The big shift the Republicans have made in public perception is that they have convinced swing voters that progressive policies do not help them, but simply take their money to help some vilified category of "others" (minorities, the poor, whatever). Democrats need to find a way to appeal to the selfishness of voters to shift this perception.