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Chat RoomWORDT AMERIKA EINDELIJK WAKKER?
In de laatste peiling van de Washington Post en ABC werd aan Amerikanen gevraagd wie ze denken dat beter is voor het land.
* De economie: Dems leiden Republiks, 52% to 33%
* Immigratie: Dems leiden Republiks, 40% to 37%
* Irak: Dems leiden Republiks, 48% to 34%
* Begrotingstekort: Dems leiden Republiks, 52% to 31%
* Belasting: Dems leiden Republiks, 48% to 40%
* Terrorisme: Dems leiden Republiks, 44% to 37%
* Gezondheid: Dems leiden Republiks, 56% to 29%
Republicans have become the credibility-free party
(updated below)
Substantial attention has been paid to the historic unpopularity of the Bush presidency, but relatively little attention has been paid to the accompanying collapse of the Republican Party’s credibility. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle every issue of any significance, including — by a now fairly wide margin — “the U.S. campaign against terrorism”:
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. Read on here >>
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. The poll asked:
All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?
The results: only 34% believe it was worth fighting, a record low. A resounding 65% believe it was not worth fighting, and 53% believe that “strongly” — both one point away from the record high. It simply doesn’t matter how well things are going in Iraq: the vast (and still increasing) preponderance of Americans have concluded that the war was a stupid, wasteful thing to do and they will not change their minds, no matter how much happy news springs forth. GOP propaganda and Terrorism-exploitation now affect nothing.Unsurprisingly, even as Congress has low approval ratings, it is Republicans in Congress who bear the brunt of that unpopularity, while Democrats in Congress remain marginally more popular:
But this is where the real lesson is to be found. The approval rating for Democrats in Congress has plummeted steadily since the American electorate gave them control of Congress in early 2007. Early on, ratings for Congressional Democrats were consistently near 50% as Americans had high hopes for their willingness to change the course of the country and place real limits on the deeply unpopular Republican policies. But as Congressional Democrats became more and more characterized by capitulation and an unwillingness to stand up to Republicans, their approval numbers steadily dropped to its current mark, just one point away from their lowest approval rating of the last 14 months.
The more willing Democrats are to stand up to Republicans and oppose their defining policies, the more popular they become. The less willing they are to do so, the more eager they are to erase distinctions and accommodate this deeply unpopular party, the more unpopular Democrats become. The empirical evidence for those propositions is close to indisputable. The profound rejection by the country of the Republican Party permits only one lesson: the country wants a party that opposes them, not resembles or fears them.
The Senate begins debate today on the various amendments to the FISA bill at 2:15 p.m. (I’ll be on a plane when that happens, but FireDogLake and others will live-blog the proceedings). Impervious to these lessons, there will almost certainly be more than enough Senate Democrats eagerly lined up to ensure the failure of any amendments which Dick Cheney dislikes and which would trigger a veto. Those are Democrats who either believe in those policies or who are hopelessly stuck in 2002 and refuse to accept political reality.
But once the Senate votes for a bill containing telecom amnesty and the vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers demanded by the President, the battle will turn to the House, which ought to apply the lessons which become increasingly clear by looking at American public opinion. Merits aside, Americans want more than anything else to see someone — anyone — willing to chart a different course than the one we have been on for the last seven years, prominently including national security and Terrorism policies.
It’s not just Bush, but the Republican Party itself, which has become politically radioactive. What rational politician would fear their discredited attacks or seek to do anything other than draw as many vivid distinctions as possible with the defining policies of the Republican Party?
UPDATE: Two unrelated notes as I prepare to leave today (I’ll be in Las Vegas to give a speech and hopefully run into CNN’s Virtues Czar Bill Bennett):
(1) Atrios is conducting a blog fund-raiser, his first in four years. Of all bloggers, the intensity and importance of the work he does is probably the most under-appreciated. It is incredibly time-consuming and difficult to wade through hundreds of blog posts (if not more) every day and consistently select the ones meriting attention. And he probably does more than any single person to shape and sustain the overall narrative that bloggers are able to promote. Any contribution to his blog is, in my view, one well worth making.
(2) The galleys for my next book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Myths of Republican Politics, were sent out last week, and Alan Colmes, who received a copy, became the first to review the new book here. The book addresses the standard manipulative electoral techniques the GOP uses to win national elections — with a focus on the fictitious personality-based mythologies and substance-free attacks which Republicans, in conjunction with our establishment press, perpetuate in order to dictate election outcomes. The last chapter will focus on how those myths apply to the 2008 GOP nominee. The book will be released on April 15, and I’d prefer that pre-ordering wait until the week before the release date.
Glen Greenwald
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:46 am
If You’re Looking For Courage
Hillary was on FOX yesterday bitch-slapping Chris Wallace. Many democrats are too craven to go on FOX.
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Political capital dwindles quickly
I suspect that Democratic leaders are reluctant to give Americans what they want because Americans will want something else as soon as they get what they want, and it’ll probably be the exact opposite of what the Americans last wanted. It’s the American way.
Is there really a large, permanent constituency for peace in America?
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:48 am
So why does McCain poll so well?
Given the poll results Glenn highlights here, I struggle to understand why McCain remains competitive with both Clinton and Obama in head-to-head matchups nationally.
The poll shows the complete rejection of the war in Iraq. McCain has said we should be in Iraq for 100 years. Why didn’t that destroy his candidacy?
The rationale for invading Iraq has been totally debunked. The NIE has shown Iran is not a threat. McCain sings “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and remains a competitive candidate. Why?
I realize that these two points will be valuable to the Democratic nominee in debates and advertising for the general election, but I still don’t see why McCain hasn’t been damaged in direct polling against Democrats. Of course, I can see why he still does well in polls of Republicans; the remaining Republicans are deranged enough to eat this stuff up. The problem is that there should only be about 25% to at most 35% of the general public that buys it. How does McCain appeal to the remaining voters to get to today’s results from CNN:
Looking ahead to the general election in November, Clinton tops McCain 50 percent to 47 percent and beats Romney 56 to 41 in hypothetical matchups. Obama beats McCain 52 percent to 44 percent and tops Romney 59 percent to 36 percent.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/04/national.poll/index.html
– Jim White
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I’ll note with irony:
the battle will turn to the House, which ought to apply the lessons which become increasingly clear by looking at American public opinion.
That in one sense this is how the founders intended it. The lower House is by design the one that is most directly accoutable to the will of the population. The proportional representation and (relatively) small districts were set up with that in mind.
Though, I think if Jefferson and Franklin were around to see just how UNrepresentative the beltway establishment has become, they might feel compelled to do something rash….
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Jim White:
Given the poll results Glenn highlights here, I struggle to understand why McCain remains competitive with both Clinton and Obama in head-to-head matchups nationally.
Two reasons:
(1) What is McCain most renown for in the national media? Opposing the Republican Party — being the Maverick — refusing to tow the party line. The more they see conservatives hating him, the more his numbers go up. That’s the point — the way to be politically popular is to be perceived as opposing the GOP, not embracing and copying it.
(2) Especially a year before the election, personality trumps issues. The media has spent the last 15 years depicting John McCain as the honor-bound Man of Courage and Conviction. That’s what most Americans know about him. As it becomes clear that he is one of the country’s most extreme warmongers and supporters of the war, we’ll see what happens to those numbers.
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:55 am
@Paul Dirks
That in one sense this is how the founders intended it. The lower House is by design the one that is most directly accoutable to the will of the population. The proportional representation and (relatively) small districts were set up with that in mind.
Though, I think if Jefferson and Franklin were around to see just how UNrepresentative the beltway establishment has become, they might feel compelled to do something rash….
Of course, the gerrymandering that is so pronounced by both parties when in control of a state legislature works very hard to reduce even that small bit of accountability and leads to the lack of representation you note.
I dream of a new constitutional convention, even after a Democratic victory in November.
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Is there really a large, permanent constituency for peace in America?
Yes, but they have notoriously short attention spans. For many, the desire for peace can be satisfied by simply not hearing about anybody dying. This also explains the other question. (Why is McCain polling so well?)
The Surge(tm) is, was and will always remain a very effective marketing campaign. Since the American public knows little about the actual quality of life in Iraq, they rely on causualty counts and news reports to give them perspective of how things are going.
Since things DO appear to have quieted down, McCain is relying on his “having bet my career” on the success of the surge to propel his candidacy forward.
This is of course why everytime something bad happens in Iraq, the RWA’s come out in droves to accuse the DFH’s of being happy about it. It’s really twisted if you think about it.
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Tails between their legs.
The majority of congressional Democrats are indeed living in the past, and like dogs that have been beaten too many times, they now cower when Republicans merely raise their hands. It’s truly spectacular how our nation’s political discourse takes place in a time warp where Democrats need to be scared all the time.
februari 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Glenn
You’ve established this tendency in the Democratic Congress, what I haven’t seen you answer is why. Why don’t the Democrats in Congress see these same polls and come out swinging? Why don’t they stop Bush in his tracks? There is plenty of evidence out there that this would be a winner politically and it is simply the right thing to do, yet they continue to cower before the Republicans.
Why?