It’s painfully obvious that major media outlets really<\/i> want Americans to care deeply about the former pastor that Barack Obama has already denounced, and to a large extent, the coverage has convinced a lot of voters that the Obama-Wright association matters.<\/p>\n
But for most Americans, there’s another association that matters a lot more<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could hurt his presidential hopes. So could his comment about “bitter” small-town America clinging to guns and religion. And Americans might question Sen. Hillary Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness.<\/p>\n But according to the latest NBC News\/Wall Street Journal poll, the bigger problem appears to be John McCain’s ties to President Bush.<\/p>\n In the survey, 43 percent of registered voters say they have major concerns that McCain is too closely aligned with the current administration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By way of comparison, the 43% of voters concerned about McCain and Bush is quite a bit more than the number concerned with Clinton’s policy reversals (36%), Obama’s “bitter” remarks (34%), and Obama’s ties to Wright and William Ayers (32%). <\/p>\n In other words, media coverage notwithstanding, Americans are 11 points more concerned with McCain’s ties to Bush than with controversial figures in Obama’s life. And yet, the latter dominates the political discourse, while the prior is treated as an afterthought, when it’s mentioned at all.<\/p>\n Indeed, while the Democratic race seems to be the only topic of discussion, and various controversies surrounding the two remaining Dems gets all kinds of play, it’s Republicans who are tanking when it comes to public approval. Asked which party should control the White House next January, Dems enjoy a huge 18-point margin (51% to 33%). As for Congress, “By a 15-point margin, 49% to 34%, voters say they want Democrats to keep control of Congress. Swing voters — the one-third of the electorate that will decide the elections — are even more hostile toward the Republican Party than voters overall, and identify by more than 2-to-1 with Democrats.”<\/p>\n And then, there’s the unfortunate news.<\/p>\n [John McCain is] in a statistical dead-heat against either Democrat in the poll. Sen. Obama, the Democratic front-runner, leads Sen. McCain 46% to 43%, and Sen. Clinton has a 45% to 44% edge over the Republican. A big reason for the closeness: More voters said they could identify with Sen. McCain’s “background” and “values” than with those of either of the Democratic contenders.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Voters don’t like McCain’s party, or his ideas, or where he wants to take the country, or his close associations with the least popular president in modern political history (Bush’s job approval is down to 27%), but they seem to think McCain’s a good guy. As the NBC\/WSJ pollster put it, “What is driving [McCain’s] image … is values. It is faith, honor, country, patriotism.”<\/p>\n
\n
\nThe Wall Street Journal noted<\/a> this morning, “Only 27% of voters have positive views of the Republican Party, according to the latest Wall Street Journal\/NBC News poll, the lowest level for either party in the survey’s nearly two-decade history.” In contrast, by a 44% to 32% margin, Americans hold positive feelings toward the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n