The Next Open Thread

by DemFromCT

Who could forget this classic Onion from 2004? It's so fitting for 2006.

Poll: Many Americans Still Unsure Whom To Vote Against

According to the poll, 46 percent of the registered voters surveyed would vote against Bush if the election were held tomorrow, while 45 percent said they were ready to vote against Kerry. Factoring in the 2 percent margin of error, the two candidates are essentially deadlocked in the race to determine which candidate America doesn't support.

Researcher Jack Harmon, an analyst for the independent Beltway think tank the Dewey-Markham Institute, said these undecided Americans will be crucial in deciding the next election.

Harmon said voters are conflicted, wanting to cast environmental and antiwar votes against Bush, but wishing also to oppose Kerry's position on taxation.

"The two major parties face a tough struggle," Harmon said. "As the election approaches, both must convince undecided voters that the opposing party's candidate is worse than their own. As both parties take more moderate positions in an election year, it's getting harder to convince citizens that there's a reason to get out there and vote against anyone."

What's on your mind today?

 

Comments

[DemFromCT]

So i was complaining about the media going easy on the Rs over immigration. The next day...

Sharp Split With G.O.P. Leaders Hurt Bush on Immigration Plan

But moments before Mr. Bush was to welcome his guests, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told the president that House Republicans were effectively sidelining — and in the view of some Congressional aides probably killing — what had become Mr. Bush's signature domestic initiative of the year: an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.

That disappointing news for Mr. Bush signaled the apparent collapse of a carefully orchestrated White House strategy to push a compromise immigration bill through Congress this summer — and in the process invigorate Mr. Bush's second term with a badly needed domestic victory.

Call it what it is... a defeat, a rebuke and a message.

[emptywheel]

And correct me if I'm wrong, resident Californians. But Arnie just refused to send national guardsmen to the border, right? Sounds like he doesn't want to repeat Wilson's demise?

Then again, as someone who worked illegally before he had papers to work in this country, he ought to be more sympathetic than most to his state's immigrant communities.

[DemFromCT]

from the WaPo (includes Arnie?):

Analysis

GOP Gets Selective in Backing Bush Agenda

With majorities on Hill at risk, Republicans are focused on surviving the coming elections.

[DemFromCT]

jeez, reading the above two ,pieces, you'd think the media sat down and actually thought about this, instad of just reading GOP talking points like they usually do.

[JohnLopresti]

Picture Mitt Romney joining Prodi in pulling their respective troops out of Iraq. Bush has built his war on the backs of the National Guard. Schwarzenegger's script for resistance against the antiMexican deployment doubtless was written for him, like most of his public policy. His polls were as low as Bush's until Schwarzenegger hired some Democratic women centrists; but policies often are public announcements without much actual followthrough to do what his script says he is going to do. Schwarzenegger's opponent in the gubernatorial campaign will highlight those inconsistencies. In CA there was a scandal with the National Guard on Mother's day, when a program the NG conducted to videotape demonstrations was revealed in the news and a state senator launched an investigation; the NG officer leading the workgroup erased all the computer drives and transferred to another office forthwith. When Ronald Reagan was elected following the centrist Democrat P. Brown in 1966, there were a few campuses nationwide beginning to demonstrate against the Vietnam conflict. RR sent 2,000 NG to the university campus near San Francisco. The week I entered grad shool I had to pass by the part of campus where the NG was over-energetically accosting young students instead of quieting the demonstrators. Limiting the graphic images here, let me say the audio memory of that encounter, which I heard as a bypasser trying to register for classes, turned my interest away from academia; it was a veritable war zone. Here is an absolutely trivialized account without a smidgeon of bathos: *; I skimmed it and found only intellectual remarks. I always thought part of the unwritten allure of Dan Quayle was his NG credentials; in those times it was a place where scions of affluent dysculturati went to act out their roughness corporeally upon liberal youth.

As for the arcanum of the Onion poll, with a little rewriting the following * could pass for a followup article; it is a blog at SF Chronicle from a few months ago. There was a third script which I believe I kept on the drafting table.

[Mimikatz]

I was at UC Berkeley from the summer of 1964 until summer 1966 (in the days when it cost $50 a semester) and then lived in SF. My parents were still in Berkeley, so I went over there regularly. I remember the National Guard in the streets in 1969, and the teargas. Unbelievable.

[Steve]

Mimikatz, if you were at Berkeley in 64-66, the unbelievable thing is that you remember anything at all.