The Next Hurrah

Public Opinion And Public Pressure

by DemFromCT

Not the same thing, of course. Now that AP- Ipsos has weighed in, along with CNN, USA/Gallup, WaPo, and Ny Times/CBS, it's helpful to look at the trends and analysis Prof. Charles Franklin has pulled to gather at pollster.com and his home at Political Arithmetik. Franklin helps explain (at least in part) the cognitive dissonance seen in today's headlines. For example, there's

AP Poll: Most See Iraq War As Failure The public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggesting the tough sell President Bush faces in asking Congress and voters for more time.

The pessimism expressed by most people — including significant minorities of Republicans — contrasted with the brighter picture offered by Gen. David Petraeus. The chief U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress on Monday that the added 30,000 troops have largely achieved their military goals and could probably leave by next summer, though he conceded there has been scant political progress.

By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success. Those calling it a failure included eight in 10 Democrats, three in 10 Republicans and about six in 10 independents, the poll showed — ominous numbers for a president who hopes to use a nationally televised address later this week to keep GOP lawmakers from joining Democratic calls for a withdrawal.

contrasted with [FL]

Area lawmakers interpret testimony differently
Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, is a member of the Armed Services Committee. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Gus Bilirakis
The bottom line: encouraging news.

Kathy Castor
The bottom line: It's time to come home

Rather than picking apart the individual polls, take a look at these trends (click for bigger pic) Prof. Franklin has put together.

Franklin astutely notes:

Bottom line: Frustrated anti-war forces are understandably angry that the 2006 election victory and subsequent Democratic Congress has failed to bring change to Iraq policy. The trend lines above show how support for the war has declined dramatically since 2003. Anti-war forces can correctly point to substantial majorities who are critical of various aspects of the war.

But change in Congress also requires that Republican members perceive that opinion against the war is so overwhelming that it is time for them to also abandon ship. That mark in public opinion has not been reached. So long as a substantial minority (say 40%+) support the current policy (or at least oppose a rapid withdrawal) then Republicans can count on a public that is too divided on the issue to pose the certainty of electoral catastrophe. This isn't to say Republicans don't wish the issue would go away, or that they relish running in 2008 with nearly 6 years of inconclusive war on their watch. But opponents of the war will not prevail in Congress unless a more massive opposition emerges--- and one united on the specific details of how to end the war.

Franklin notes that there are three groups here, those who want to stay the course, those who want out asap and everyone else, roughly in thirds (something we have noted here as well). However, Franklin points out out that rejection of Bush (blue line) is greater than accepting the war as a mistake (purple line). This is why Bush needs Petraeus to be the front man (and why we need to be clear that this is the unpopular Bush's unpopular war). What the cautious Prof. Franklin doesn't note is that 'rapid withdrawal' is not the same as "deliberate withdrawal" or "responsible withdrawal" or withdrawal with honor" or whatever the heck you want to call it. The 'swing vote', if you want to put it that way favors withdrawal and is just as fed up as the rest of us about how things are going both in Iraq and in the country as a whole.

What will happen is that the GOP and their shills will push the line that 'the President got what he want'. That's all smoke and mirrors. The conflicting independent reports preceding yesterday led to a rather lackluster set of media reports about the Petraeus hearing. GOP congresspeople have to be disappointed their cover is as thin as it is in preparation for Mr. Clinch-The-Deal's Presidential address. Bush runs the risk now of driving away any waverers in his next inarticulate defense of  "stay the course" (see graph - he is wildly mistrusted on Iraq).

The public opinion trends are not going to be reversed (see Matthew Dowd):

In the public's mind, the Iraq War was a mistake, and continuing the status quo is simply continuing on with a mistake. As a result, most Americans now view the situation in Iraq as a "rearview" mirror issue -- meaning that the public believes it is time to focus on the process of ending our involvement and getting out quickly. They see American troops as targets in a place we aren't wanted, and they desire a plan which achieves responsible withdrawal in the quickest and safest way.

That's why Republican Jim Walsh (NY-25) is breaking with the President, and that's why, sooner or later, others will too.

crossposted at Daily Kos

Rudy's Frontrunner Status

by DemFromCT

An interesting NY Times piece today by Michael Cooper highlights the camapign's distorting the Giuliani fiscal record as NYC mayor (so that he doesn't have to rely solely on his dismal WTC health record).

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he "turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus."

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

"He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor," Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. "The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do."

This ties in with a recent Gallup analysis, featured on pollster.com. Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Given the advanced start to the 2008 presidential campaigns, one of the uncertainties hanging over the process has been the degree to which voter preferences for the Democratic and Republican nominations might change as some of the candidates inevitably become more familiar to the public. Do the early frontrunners have a greater chance of being overtaken than early frontrunners in previous elections?

The bottom line is this, as summarized by pollster. com:

Saad's analysis is well worth reading in full, but here is the gist: Slightly less than half (46%) of Republican's nationally know Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson well enough to rate all four. Among these voters, Giuliani trails Fred Thompson by eight points (33% to 25%). Giuliani's double digit national lead in Gallup's polling comes entirely from the 54% of Republicans who are unfamiliar with one of the top four candidates (bolded mine)...

Among Democrats, the pattern is different. Less than one in four Democrats (23%) is not yet familiar with each of the three best known candidates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. While Clinton holds a very wide lead over Barack Obama (53% to 17%) among those who are unfamiliar with one of the candidates, she still leads by a comfortable 13 point margin (43% to 30%) with Edwards finishing a distant third (with 13%) even among those who know all three candidates.

Sentiment On Withdrawal

by DemFromCT

From Chris Cillizza's WaPo poll analysis:

Let's Parse the Polls!

A look at the profile of the 29 percent who want to pull out all troops now produces a somewhat unconventional picture.

Women are more likely than men to back immediate withdrawal (33 percent to 23 percent). Support for an immediate withdrawal is highest in the West (34 percent) and lowest in the South (24 percent). Thirty four percent of black voters supported an immediate withdrawal, as did 26 percent of whites.

None of those figures is terribly surprising.

But how about the fact that there isn't any statistical difference between liberals and moderates? Twenty-eight percent of self-identified liberals backed immediate withdrawal, while a similar 27 percent of moderates felt the same way.

...

The poll data suggests any attempt to put a definitive label on those who favor immediate withdrawal (liberals, young people, Obama supporters) falls short. The reality is that the war as a political issue is far too complicated to boil down into neatly-packed subgroups.

The analysis speaks for itself. Trying to put 'far left' labels on this won't stick any more than calling 65% disapproval of Bush's performance 'far left'.

Welcome to the mainstream.

Fighting Over The Independent Voter

by DemFromCT

Come election time, one of our favorite things to do is argue over discuss how best to reach the independent voter, and whether it matters if we do.

In 2004, there seemed fewer of them than in 2006, but in fact, they always exist and roughly speaking, range from 20 to 33% of the electorate truly in play depending on the year. This WaPo-Henry J Kaiser-Harvard poll puts some further data behind the discussion:

Wood, Welch and McClure all describe themselves as political independents. Wood is a classic swing voter, while Welch and McClure generally side with one party. They represent two of the five types of independents revealed in a new, in-depth study by The Washington Post in collaboration with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.

The study is a comprehensive examination of a broad segment of the electorate -- about three in 10 voters call themselves independents -- that is poised to play the role of political power broker in 2008. Independents split their votes between President Bush and Kerry in 2004 but shifted decisively to the Democrats in 2006, providing critical support in the Democratic takeover of the House and the Senate.

The new survey underscores the Republican Party's problems heading into 2008. Fueled by dissatisfaction with the president and opposition to the Iraq war, independents continue to lean heavily toward the Democrats. Two-thirds said the war is not worth fighting, three in five said they think the United States cannot stabilize Iraq, and three in five believed that the campaign against terrorism can succeed without a clear victory in Iraq.

From the article:

Fifty years ago, independents accounted for about a quarter of all adults. Today, that proportion is between three in 10 and four in 10, depending on the survey. In most states that have party registration, independents or those who decline to state a party preference are the fastest-growing segment of voters, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

Independents mirror the population in terms of age, income and education. But they are disproportionately male. A majority of independents are men, while a majority of Democrats are women and the GOP is typically divided evenly between men and women.

Independents also are more secular than the overall electorate. Four in 10 in the new study would like to see religion have less influence on politics and public life than it does now. Almost a fifth say they have no religion.

One of the discussion points going forward will be how best to reach this collection of voters (the approach to the disguised partisan will likely not work with the disengaged or disillusioned) and how not to alienate everyone else in the process.

If it were easy, we'd always win.

Rays of Hope: The Next Generation

By Mimikatz

As we look forward to the Fourth of July holiday next week, when Congress goes home to face the voters (and you have a chance to reach them locally to tell them what you think), word comes via the NY Times that the Next Generation is looking promising.  A Times/CBS News/MTV poll on those 17-29 (born between 1978 and 1990) finds this group, which straddles Generation X (born 1962-1981) and the Millenial Generation (born 1982 to 2001), to be one of the more liberal generations in recent memory. 

Among the more remarkable findings, since giving Mister Bush a more than 80% favorable rating after 2001,

They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

In part, their positive view of Democrats may come from a sense of shared values as well as disillusionment with GOP incompetence.  For the first time in decades more young people describe themselves as liberal (28%) than conservative (27%).  Moreover,

By a 52 to 36 majority, young Americans say that Democrats, rather than Republicans, come closer to sharing their moral values, while 58 percent said they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and 38 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans.

Asked if they were enthusiastic about any of the candidates running for president, 18 percent named Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and 17 percent named Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Those two were followed by Rudolph L. Guiliani, a Republican, who was named by just 4 percent of the respondents.

The survey also found that 42 percent of young Americans thought it was likely or very likely that the nation would reinstate a military draft over the next few years — and two-thirds said they thought the Republican Party was more likely to do so. And 87 percent of respondents said they opposed a draft.

Surprisingly, they are more optimistic than their elders that the US will be successful in Iraq, with a bare (51%) majority finding that the US very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq.  They are pessimistic about the future--70% said the country is on the wrong track and 48% expect their generation to be worse off than their parents.  But 58% say their are paying attention to next year's election and 77% thought their generation's votes would significantly affect the 2008 Presidential election. 

New Broder Bounce For Bush

by DemFromCT

From Newsweek:

It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush
now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation,
or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate
down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval
of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our
poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s
nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also
scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems to be
casting a dark shadow over the GOP’s chances for victory in ’08. The
NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating the
Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.

The Next Open Thread: Polling Edition

by DemFromCT

So many GOP scandals, so little time. So let's change the subject and talk about polling. From Scott Rasmussen:

At this early stage of Election 2008, the public is siding with Democrats on the key issue of the day—Iraq. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Likely Voters either want to bring home the troops from Iraq immediately or have a firm timetable for withdrawal. In the showdown over the Iraq funding bill, most Americans favor the legislation passed by Congress. Fifty-two percent (52%) oppose a Presidential veto. Looking down the road, just 33% of voters now believe history will judge the U.S. mission in Iraq a success. Forty-three percent (43%) of voters believe that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign.Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor raising taxes on the wealthy. 

Of course, the main topic there is the Hillary vs Obama horserace, but that's of less interest this early on. For those who care, Obama has moved ahead in polling, though Craig Crawford thinks in the end it's all about who has bigger cojones on terrorism.

Remember, what's good for America is good for the troops. What's on your mind?

Even Republicans Have Had Enough of Bush

by DemFromCT

The CBS/NY Times poll is out and it ain't pretty.

In the months since the Congressional elections, President Bush has lost substantial support among members of his own party, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Mr. Bush’s approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

And that approval rating?

Over all, Mr. Bush’s job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job, compared with 34 percent at the end of October. Sixty-one percent disapproved, compared with 58 percent in October, within the margin of sampling error.

Twenty-three percent of those polled approved of the way Mr. Bush is dealing with the situation in Iraq. Twenty-five percent approved of his handling of foreign policy.

Even the president’s campaign against terrorism, long his signature issue, is seen positively by only 40 percent of those polled, while 53 percent disapprove.

The worst President ever is on his way to being recognized as such by everyone, not just us. How does it feel to be so... mainstream in our thinking?

 

      

And Now For Some Polling Goodness...

by DemFromCT

Pollster.com (yes, they're around, even in the inter-election period) has a nice bit of graphic data on the Republican and Democratic state of mind, with regard to the front runners for 2008 (more here from Polling Report).

While we tend to focus on the Dems (and Hillary-Obama), the Republican numbers are fascinating. John McCain, battered by his iraq support and befuddled by his religious right base problems, can no longer legitimately be considered the front runner. while Rudy has his issues, particularly in Republican primary-land, he is starting to run up some impressive numbers against McCain and Newt, the third place finisher in the latest polls.

Given the unhappiness of the religious right about all of these candidates, it's about time the DC press corps starts doing some straight talk about McCain's diminishing chances to be President. Besides being a panderer when it comes to issues that used to matter to him (the link is to a story about his Discovery Institute-sponsored talk, which puts him in bed with creationism), Iraq is killing his chances with thinking America.  McCain is just another 'do anything to be President' candidate, and is likely to be rejected by everyone across the political spectrum because of it. The numbers don't lie.

SOTU: Bush Has Lost The Audience

by DemFromCT

The NBC/WSJ poll is out, and it ain't pretty.

President Bush on Tuesday night gets another shot at persuading Americans to support his Iraq war strategy and domestic agenda. His problem: Much of the public has stopped listening.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll on the eve of Mr. Bush's State of the Union address underscores the extent to which he has lost the nation's ear. Just 22% of Americans say they want the president to set policy for the country, while 57% want Congress to do so. Two-thirds say his performance in office is unlikely to get better in his last two years as president.

Who are the 1/3 that think his performance can get better? Those who think it can't get any worse? Here's McClatchey:

Facing a hostile Congress and a skeptical public, President Bush will use his State of the Union speech Tuesday to try to leverage his rapidly diminishing clout behind a series of new proposals.

In his seventh annual address to Congress, Bush will offer to work with lawmakers on a handful of domestic issues while urging them to support his plans for Iraq. He'll call for expanding health-insurance coverage, tout a foreign guest-worker program and offer initiatives intended to slow global warming.

But he's never gone to Capitol Hill under such difficult circumstances, and he's so weak politically that his effort to set the national agenda is unlikely to succeed, for Democrats didn't win power to follow his lead.

He'll speak at 9 p.m. EST to a Congress controlled by his political opponents and to a national television audience that's lost confidence in him. A new ABC News-Washington Post poll released Monday found that Bush was more unpopular on the eve of this State of the Union speech than any president since Richard Nixon in 1974, during the Watergate scandal.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they disapprove of Bush's job performance.

All the polls can be found here graphically and here via chart. The fact is that Bush is clearly in Nixon territory... and clearly recognized by the American public as someone on the decline. The NBC/WSJ says:

Both Journal/NBC pollsters say Mr. Bush may be able to improve his standing by accommodating his reduced stature and the loss of his Republican congressional majorities with a revamped policy agenda. To some degree, the White House has signaled plans to attempt just that.

Seeing is believing, but the opportunity to reach across the aisle may already have come and gone. In any case, adapting to the new reality requires the ability to understand and accept that reality. So far, I think it's fair to consider mr. Bush an underachiever in this area.