No wonder Republicans are feeling pessimistic

February 4, 2008

At this point, there’s no apparent need to delve into national polls that have nothing to do with the presidential horserace. Most observers can pretty much guess the results without looking — support for Bush, the war, and the state of the economy are all pretty abysmal.

But Glenn Greenwald pointed to some interesting data from the latest WaPo/ABC poll that shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly. Poll respondents were asked which political party they trusted to do a better job on various issues:

* The economy: Dems led Republicans, 52% to 33%

* Immigration: Dems led Republicans, 40% to 37%

* Iraq: Dems led Republicans, 48% to 34%

* The budget deficit: Dems led Republicans, 52% to 31%

* Taxes: Dems led Republicans, 48% to 40%

* The U.S. campaign against terrorism: Dems led Republicans, 44% to 37%

* Health care: Dems led Republicans, 56% to 29%

First, these aren’t cherry-picked to make Dems look good; these were all of the issues polled. Republicans trailed in every category.

Second, in almost every instance, matters are getting worse for the GOP, not better. Especially on the question regarding terrorism, this was the worst Republicans have done on the issue since the WaPo began polling on the question after 9/11. Given that this is supposed to be the party’s signature issue, it’s not at all a good sign.

Given the results, Glenn suggested Dems should enter some of these policy disputes with a little more confidence.

From a purely political perspective, one would expect that Democrats would seek to highlight contrasts with such an unpopular and discredited party, not to emulate and capitulate to it. Republicans are distrusted across the board, and thus — as the 2006 election demonstrated (in which Karl Rove made Terrorism-exploitation the campaign’s centerpiece) — the GOP’s standard fear-mongering tactics and accusatory attacks are plainly impotent, even counter-productive.

Americans continue to turn against anything the Republicans touch. The most vivid example of that is public opinion on the Iraq War. Even with the press corps and Beltway elite insisting by consensus that the Glorious Surge has made everything so much better in Iraq — we’re finally winning! — and even as we were endlessly told that the war was only unpopular because we were losing, Americans hate the Iraq War more than ever before.

I’d love to think Dems would take Glenn’s advice, but I have a hunch some party leaders will look at the exact same poll numbers and think, “See? We’ve caved to a bunch of the administration’s demands, and as a result, the public trusts us more on every issue, across the board. Indeed, we’re exactly where we want to be in an election year. The answer, then, is to keep doing what we’re doing.”

It’s counterintuitive, I know, but I think I’m beginning to understand how the party establishment rationalizes ducking the hardest fights.

“it’s not at all a good sign.”

i think it might be a very good sign – a sign that perhaps a majority of americans are finally smartening up!

  • CB , this is a blatant attempt at “voter depression” by quoting all that depressing reality.

    Hey, Republicans there’s not such thing as false despair.

    No we McCain’t. No we McCain’t. No we McCain’t

  • this is why the “hillary can’t win” crap from the obama people is so annoying.

    hillary clinton is the democrat most closely identified in the minds of the electorate with exactly the policy preferences reflected in these polls.

    clinton had the best economy in history.

    dems swept in 2006. obama wasn’t on the ticket then, was he?

    the argument that hillary can’t win the general is foolish tripe. it is a distraction that keeps people from seeing the coming hillary landslide.

    elect the person that is most closely associated with democratic leadership on these policies. vote for hillary clinton.

  • Many Democrats in Congress seem a little like abused wives. They have come to believe that they don’t know what they are doing because their husbands (or in this case the GOP) have hammered it so often with no puch-back from Democrats themselves or the media. Regular, everyday Democrats (in the form of bloggers) can tell them over and over again that they need to get out of the cycle and show some muscle, but becuase they have become so insulated and lack a sense of self, that these messages/rants don’t compute. I wonder if this is why Obama (and Webb and Lamont, etc before him) seems so much more – he doesn’t seem to be mired into the abusive cycle.

  • Counterintuitive? How about batshit crazy nuts? Everytime they sorta kinda fight back, their poll numbers increase. Imagine if they really fought, like they actually believed in the Constitution and the rule of law and that torture is bad and that W is . . . well, even on a DFH left wing blog you can’t use words that bad.

  • The real question is what politics be like after the Republican Party collapses. Will Al Gore’s loss in 2000 be revenged because President Bush’s incompetence and stupidity coupled with the incompetence of Hastert and Frist will so damage the Republican Party that the Republicans cannot find a solution before the demographic tidal wave buries them for good.

    Maybe the real legacy of President Bush is that we will be the last Republican President and his massive failures end up creating a period of one party rule.

  • What? Dems don’t vote the way we Dems elected them to?

    no. way.

    Our “leaders” refuse to do what we elected them to do because they’re more afraid of the corporations than they are of us. They know that, faced with Republicans as the only alternative, we’ll keep voting for them. What needs to happen is that we PRIMARY a bunch of them to keep the rest of them nervous. Each primary that includes a progressive against a DINO needs to be fought hard, and all the corporate stooges need to be put on notice. it might take a few cycles, but we have to do it.

  • Time for the otherwise-unemployables in D.C. to remember what a French politician said 120 years ago:

    “There go my followers, and I must run after them, for I am their leader!”

    That those bozos are as dumb as they are doesn’t speak well for Ivy League “educations”, does it?

  • Maybe the real legacy of President Bush is that we will be the last Republican President and his massive failures end up creating a period of one party rule.

    Here’s hoping. The Republicans have worked hard to earn a well-deserved oblivion.

    Actually, if the GOP were to completely collapse, the centrifugal forces in the Democratic party would build till there was a split. This country is too big and diverse to be ruled by one party.

    But realistically, I doubt the Republicans are going the way of the Whigs. Zombie comebacks are their specialty (see Nixon, Richard).

  • Sigh!

    It’s nice to know Americans are catching a clue.

    And with a few more votes in the Senate, maybe the Democrats can start acting like Democrats. But until then I’m not going to lean to hard on them.

    After all, come January either Obama or Clinton will stop the vetos.

  • You want to see Republicans sweat? How about talking up a law in the next Congress to retroactively tax all of the billions of ill-gotten profits they’ve looted from the American people over the last seven years? *That* will really get their pulses racing, I guarantee it.

  • Not all DemCongs are liberals, nor do they agree on everything. We’ve got everything from Ted Kenendy Dems to Blue Dog Dems. Not all of them are afraid of Bush and being branded cowards. Many of the Blue Dog Dems actually agree with some of those policies. It’s not that the DemCongs are cowards. It is that we have the wrong Dem leadership in place.

  • “See? We’ve caved to a bunch of the administration’s demands, and as a result, the public trusts us more on every issue, across the board. Indeed, we’re exactly where we want to be in an election year. The answer, then, is to keep doing what we’re doing.”

    It’s counterintuitive, I know, but I think I’m beginning to understand how the party establishment rationalizes ducking the hardest fights.

    The rest of the Machiavellian equation, CB, is that the Dems start to stand up to Bush and whip the voters into a frenzy starting around September so that it peaks the first Tuesday in November. As they did in 2006 and swept both houses. They’ll do the same in 2008 to possibly get unbreakable majorities. These effective tactics are at the expense of possible national bankruptcy and an increased body count with our soldiers so I’m not sure I support this very smart, but cavalier strategy.

    Allowing pre-emptive war and trickle-down economics to prove to everyone beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are unmitigated disasters is a compelling but perhaps ruinous course towards a Pyrrhic victory.

    The democrats may resoundingly wrest control over a blighted wasteland.

  • #11, so he can resonate throughout history as the absolutely worst president we have ever had, alone from any misinterpreted impeachment attempt. Clean and simple for future historians to sew together the narrative of how beginning in 1994 the Republican party fought against Americans of all stripes to implement a one-party system that would dominate our political landscape in perpetuity. The Newties, the Neocons, and the evangelicals put their lock, stock and barn on the Bush presidency to bring about the America they wanted, but now that we are about to vote the Rascals out in ’08, they have no place to go, but the dust bin of history! -Kevo

  • RacerX said:

    Our “leaders” refuse to do what we elected them to do because they’re more afraid of the corporations than they are of us. They know that, faced with Republicans as the only alternative, we’ll keep voting for them. What needs to happen is that we PRIMARY a bunch of them to keep the rest of them nervous. Each primary that includes a progressive against a DINO needs to be fought hard, and all the corporate stooges need to be put on notice. it might take a few cycles, but we have to do it.

    Great idea, but how do we follow through? We need issues that are non-negotiable, just like abortion, tax cuts and gay marriage are for the Republicans.

    While I can think of several potiential litmus test issues, one springs to mind that would make all our other progressive goals easier to achieve — public financing of political campaigns.

    The presidential candidtates need to raise $10 thousand per day to be competitive. Senate candidates need to raise $10 thousand every week. How can they raise that much money and remain honest and commited to ordinary people? How can they spend so much time raising money and have any time left to do the people’s business? How many billions of dollars could be saved if members of Congress didn’t have to have to insert special earmarks to pay back their bribes campaign contributions?

    Get the bribes out of politics, and you’ll take a huge advantage away from the corporations.

  • If the Democrats get a historic mandate in 08 and do nothing but compromise,
    blowing their biggest opportunity since 64, then the party should be dissolved.

  • Steve T nails it.

    Public financing, AKA “Clean Elections”

    Implement that and most of our problems can be solved. There’s no way to bribe people who don’t need bribes. At least its a lot harder to do it anyway.

    I say that, IRV, and/or media re-regulation would make a huge difference.

  • Our ineffectiveness may actually be working to our advantage for once. People want the GOP stopped. They hate the Democrats because they don’t have the spine to stop them. So what’s their next option? More Democrats. That’s the only way they’ll ever get enough confidence to govern, and the only way to keep the Republicans from screwing things up is to kick them out of power.

    If Dems were hated for doing something bad, I’d be more worried, but the fact that they aren’t doing enough just means they have no choice but to strengthen their hand. The fact that they’re so cowardly makes it easier because you know they won’t get arrogant and power hungry. The most you can hope for is getting them to venture out and and not run back inside if they see their shadow.

    That’s the choice.

  • Michael at 17 said: If the Democrats get a historic mandate in 08 and do nothing but compromise, blowing their biggest opportunity since 64, then the party should be dissolved.

    I think this is why some of us are less-than-confident about Obama’s ability to move a progressive agenda – because he starts from a position of compromise, which is the same place so many of our Senators and Representatives have worked from. They say they will be tough, we’ve believed them over and over again, and over and over again, we find ourselves looking up at the underside of the bus.

    It is the president who is going to drive the agenda. The president who is going to be calling up members of the leadership to tell them what he or she wants to come out of the Congress. That Obama has a personality and charisma distinguishes him from Harry Reid how, exactly?

    How does the Democratic leadership function in the face of a president who says his goal is to unite the country? Does he tell them to press the progressive agenda hard, or does he tell them to make sure they incorporate the GOP ideas? When they pass strongly Democratic bills, does he sign them even if it makes the GOP unhappy? Is he hamstrung by his campaign of bringing America together? Will he tell the voters which issues he won’t be compromising on before the election, or will that be a big surprise? Where’s the common ground on reproductive rights, on civil liberties, on same-sex unions, on health care – on all the issues where we, as Democrats, are of a completely different philosophy and belief? Which of those things are you willing to see compromise on?

    I guess I just have no feel for how the legislative branch operates under a president who campaigned as the unity candidate. Aren’t the people going to expect the middle of the road more often than not – because even though the Democratic way may be the actual best way, there will be push-back from the hard-liner Republicans who will fight that tooth and nail.

    What happens when Senate Majority Leader Dodd goes toe-to-toe with Obama on surveillance or military commissions – and Obama loses? How do you reconcile the hard work that is being done to elect progressive members of Congress who will go to the mat for Democratic policy, with a president who won’t be willing to do the same because it’s too divisive?

    Does anything get done?

  • This is one reason why I’m starting to feel that McCain won’t be as formidable as we fear. Compare him to Romney, who while soulless, isn’t tied to all the wreckage of this administration. McCain didn’t just do nothing while Bush trashed the country, he embraced him. To get to the nomination, he refused to criticize Bush on anything. His late critique of Rumsfeld doesn’t count. Talk about a dodge. And even now, with the nomination all but wrapped up, he’s still pandering to the base. St. John won’t be easy, but he isn’t unbeatable.

  • #20 Anne – For starters, Obama doesn’t LIE about Iraq the way Hillary does.

    Instead of tearing down opponents with lies, Obama will bring people into his fold creating a new majority. No compromises – Obama has stated that he will stand up for progressive principles, ones that he has worked on all his life. That’s unlike Hillary, who will triangulate and compromise when convenient as she has done all her life.

  • Why aren’t Democrats being more asssertive on these issues? That’s easy. Listen to how the media is giving the nomination to Obama since he won’t be as “devisive” as Clinton. Democrats are letting Republicans (and the media) pick the nominee, just as they have let Republicans pick the issues in the Bush era. For some strange reason, the Media seems to think Republicans will just sit back and go easy on Obama if he’s the nominee, but go nuts if it’s Clinton. Trust me on this. The Republicans will rip Obama apart with the same intensity they would use on Clinton and the end result will be a victory for the Media’s favorite, John McCain.

  • I have to admit I’m surprised by these poll results, particularly on terrorism and immigration, where I’d thought Republicans would have taken a better share. In light of this, I’m very surprised democrats didn’t fare far better on the budget deficit! I would’ve expected at least 80/20 on that one…

    #3 English teacher: I think you’re giving Clinton too much credit over the “Hillary can’t win” argument. I know republicans who have said they would vote for Obama or McCain and specifically NOT Hillary Clinton. There’s a strong prejudice against her among many democrats, (probably) most independents, and almost all republicans, for whatever reason that might be.

  • Now that the sleeping American sheeple have awakened to smell the manure, they are way ahead of the spineless Democratic establishment. Hopefully candidate Obama means what he says about changing the mindset that got us into the war to begin with, but he doesn’t have the gravitas to do that. I happen to think that we will be in Iraq for the next 40 years no matter who gets elected, but maybe, just maybe, this huge ship of state can change direction enough to avoid the rocks that loom ever larger before us.

  • What happens when Senate Majority Leader Dodd goes toe-to-toe with Obama on surveillance or military commissions – and Obama loses? — Anne, @20

    OK. Since we know what Dodd’s position on those issues is, what you’re suggesting is that Obama would embrace the illegal wiretaps and the military commissions since that’s the only way for them to go toe-to-toe on those subjects. Unstated but obvious, given that there are now just the two Dem candidates, is the contention that Clinton would be against such laws, in line with Dodd’s stance.

    Is there anything in Obama’s record which makes you think he’s so enamoured of Bush’s criminal practices that he’d actually fight with Dem Congress to keep them in place? Conversely, is there anything in Clinton’s record which makes you think that she’d be against those laws?

    Or is it, simply, that you’re searching, with ever greater urgency, for a 2×4 to hit Obama upside the head? As has been your habit, these past couple of weeks?

    Zeitgeist finds a 2×4, he adds it to the raft, to get his candidate over the rapids; that’s admirable You, however, aren’t interested in building up Clinton; you’re just interested in tearing down Obama, with whatever “tool” comes handy. Can’t help but wonder why, since until recently, you were one of the most sensible and reasonable “voices” on this blog. But Obama-hatred seems to be eating through your brain, rendering you as blind, as the Clinton haters are.

  • libra – yes, I have a brain-eating disease that makes me ask questions – ones that I haven’t been able to get the answers to, but apparently, on the basis of lofty rhetoric, high-profile endorsements and big crowds, I am not supposed to even need to ask.

    Good to know.

    Edwards was my candidate. Not Clinton, about whom I have plenty of queasiness. Not Clinton, who, because of the rampant Hillary-hatred here, I have spent more than a little time defending; that has put me on the receiving end of name-calling by the same people whose response to questions aobut Obama is “talk to the hand.”

    I have no candidate. I have tried to like Obama – something I’m sure you don’t believe, but then, I don’t record all my thoughts here, or the content of my conversations with friends and co-workers and others, nor do I record a minute-by-minute diary of what I am reading and where. It usually goes like this: I see him in a debate, or I read something about him that makes me think I could vote for him without having to hold my nose, and then the next day he says or does something that calls into question, for me, whether he is as committed to progressive values as I thought he might be. This constant back-and-forth troubles me – I’d like to keep moving forward, but I’m still not there.

    Today, when I saw Michelle Obama tell Deborah Roberts on GMA that she just really didn’t know if she would be able to support Hillary Clinton if she were the nominee, I was stunned. Stunned at the immaturity of the answer, stunned at the total absence of unity and interest in coming together if her husband – the “only one” who could accomplish all that we are facing – was not the nominee.

    The habits I see here of late are those that involve an inability to provide any significant substance in making the case for Obama that extends beyond the the bumper sticker phrases, and is accompanied by indignation and condemnation for anyone who dares to question his readiness, or his committment to liberal values.

    So, so sorry to still be wrestling with having to choose between Obama and Clinton, but if I really, really liked one of them, I would not have been an Edwards supporter in the first place.

    Why are you and so many others so afraid to try to answer the questions? To say how you envision the Congress working with a President Obama, to discuss how a president who seems to want to be all things to all people will be able to work with the progressives we are trying to elect and re-elect to the Congress?

  • SteveT wrote: “While I can think of several potiential litmus test issues, one springs to mind that would make all our other progressive goals easier to achieve — public financing of political campaigns.”

    Sorry, I have a problem with that. Because you’d have to establish rules about who could get public money, and they’d be like the rules for who gets to participate in debates. We’d spend all our time arguing about Kucinich or Ron Paul getting funding. We already have enough incombant protection built into this racket.

    If you want to get the excessive reliance on money out of campaigns, than force the broadcast media, that uses OUR airwaves, to have to sell commerical time at a discount, not a premium, for political ads. That’s where all the money is going.

    And if idiots like McCain spend their money on squabbling consultants who nearly derail his campaign, then more FOOL him.

  • Today, when I saw Michelle Obama tell Deborah Roberts on GMA that she just really didn’t know if she would be able to support Hillary Clinton if she were the nominee, I was stunned. — Anne, @27

    Then I suggest that you re-watch that bit; TPM (Election Central) has the clip. The question wasn’t whether she’d *support* Clinton; the question was whether she’d *work* to support Hillary. She said that everyone in the party would support the nominee — presumably, that means herself as well. But, as for taking an active part in promoting Clinton? Would you expect Elizabeth Edwards to do as much for Clinton as she had done for her husband? If not, why would you expect it of Obama’s wife?

    Why are you and so many others so afraid to try to answer the questions? To say how you envision the Congress working with a President Obama, to discuss how a president who seems to want to be all things to all people will be able to work with the progressives we are trying to elect and re-elect to the Congress? — Anne

    Not “afraid” so much, as just leery, because I do not have all the answers. I myself was Edwards’ supporter right up to the day he dropped out and have started looking at “replacement candidates” fairly late.

    How I envision Obama working with the Congress? With less heat than Clinton. If only because he’s more likely to bring in with him more Dems into the Congress than she would. How will he be able to work with progressives, if he wants to be all things to all people? First, I’m not as sure as you seem to be, that he does, indeed, want to be all things to all people. But, if so, then, surely, he’d try to please the Dems — on whose ticket he chose to run? Before trying to please everyone else?

    And now, please try and answer my question: what makes you think that Obama would fight Dodd — on the wrong side, yet — on the issues of illegal wiretapping and the kangaroo courts of the military commissions?

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