http://www.time.com/time/press_relea...692562,00.html
So - what's the reason for the huge jump? It's hard to believe he got a convention bump.
http://www.time.com/time/press_relea...692562,00.html
So - what's the reason for the huge jump? It's hard to believe he got a convention bump.
Hard to say, really. One thing worth noting in the methodology was that this survey was taken throughout the convention. From August 31st-Sept 3rd. Some of these high marks might be indicative of the 'celebrity' aspects of the early convention before Miller and Cheney flipped out and Bush rambled aimlessly while avoiding the issues. It's also taken before serious analysis and rebuttal have been put into play. Of course, I tend to be skeptical these days that most Americans, and hence the ratings chasing broadcast media, are interested in serious analysis if it cuts into their free time or half-hour they set aside for infotainment.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...DG7O8ICC01.DTL
At least a few reasons I find believable in there.
It will be interesting to see the other polls in the next week.
I've come to be skeptical of polls as an indicator of who will win until a couple of weeks before the election, and even then in close elections they tend to be unreliable. Unless you see a consistent, across the board huge gap.
Patently silly. Public opinion, thanks to all the hype, was strongly behind Bush's Iraq invasion. He's no martyr and even if he was Rove isn't. I didn't see too many prime time speakers at The Republican convention railing on about abortion or school prayer. Heck, they didn't mention Osama Bin Ladin but once during the entire convention. How is that being true to core issues? Didn't you see the reporting covering the chasm between the Republican Party platform, and indeed Bush's own stated and implied positions, and what they deigned to tell the American people about their goals and 'compassion'?
Do most Democrats disagree with the Iraq war and did they let that slide during their convention? Sure. But for the most part they did let it all hang out - they actually let their liberals speak rather than, as the Republicans, hide their conservatives and trot out moderates who were, seemingly, not interested in or allowed to address moderate issues at all. It was 100% red meat delivered by people who can't possibly believe much of what they were saying. Indeed, all of the major Republican speakers seem to have been angling for a Presidential run of their own down the road. Even the Governator has hinted he wouldn't mind seeing the Constitution amended so he can run one day.
Talk about fake? Sure, it's stagecraft for both parties but I only heard the phrase 'Orwellian' about The Republican convention. Coaching the audience what to say and when, fake reporters trolling the floor and doing interviews with delegates, and practically a Praetorian guard surrounding the sancrosect compound of a few thousand clueless political tourists while a half-million folks marched in the streets with outrage.
I suppose you've already seen the articles factchecking what was said by the speakers and how very little of it holds up to scruitiny. But within the rightwing echochamber all is well. And unfortunately, I suspect, many people just don't know what to think so they throw up their hands and go with the one what brung 'em. One thing that does drive me crazy about my otherwise very cool moderate Republican boss is that he just assumes everyone is corrupt and stupid, Republicans and Democrats, so he doesn't take anything terribly seriously and mainly angles for tax cuts for himself. That's a copout. It's important to do homework and know the issues for yourself unless you're tired of living in a functioning democracy and would prefer a symbolic one driven by whatever political winds can be whipped around by the Party or political PACs with the richest patrons.
What scares the hell out of me: I've seen polls and studies in the past that make the case that most Americans vote for president based almost entirely on the TV ads. People like the posters here, whether you agree or disagree vehemently with their views, at least try to dig deeper (even if it is for the purpose of arguing, and even if we argue about the validity of the sources.) But this appears to be a minority. It's scary to think that, barring some scandal or major world event, the winner will be the one with the best ad agency.
I can only blame a frightening collective national ignorance and apathy.
It's hard for me to take a journalist seriously if their analysis of the motives for the behavior of the opposing party begins and ends with "fanatical hatred."Originally Posted by Rollory
It's hard for me to take any op-ed journalist seriously, period. They just want to get read.It's hard for me to take a journalist seriously if their analysis of the motives for the behavior of the opposing party begins and ends with "fanatical hatred."
It's hard for me to take any poll seriously, because they are just op-ed pieces themselves these days. I'm pretty sure they just pick various insane asylums at random and keep polling until they get the results they are looking for.
It's getting hard for me to take any political opinion seriously whatsoever anymore. It's all convoluted rationalization carefully crafted to cover up the fact that they made up their minds sometime before they were born.
FWIW - another poll showing a big post-convention bump:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2244238&EDATE=
What's interesting is the majority of those polled said they saw very little to none of the convention.
What I found tacky was the little midnight rally Kerry had in the last night of the convention in which he attacked Bush and Cheney for not serving in Vietnam. As if they attacked Kery's Vietnam record or specifically called him unpatriotic. On the contrary they did just the opposite. It makes Kerry seem petty, beating that straw man. This rally did NOTHING good at ALL for Kerry. The excuse democrats gave for why Kerry did not get a bump after the DNC was that we have a polarized nation and so forth and that most were already decided. Obviously they were wrong about no bump possible, but what else could they say? Kerry made a severe tactical error bragging about his war record, you know, "Reporting for duty" with his band of brothers (many of which only served a few weeks with him- remember he was only there for four months).
Meanwhile we have TONS of vets pissed off at him for what he said when he came back. He opened a can of worms with his war record bragging. I remember a few weeks ago someone talking about a protest rally Kerry was in which "Hanoi Jane Fonda" was three feet away from him. On one side you had a gaggle of useless hippies holding communist North Vietnamese flags and on the other side another group of worthless hippies burning the American flag. Wtf was he thinking bringing up Vietnam? BAD move. The DNC was full of liberals who indeed represented well the democratic platform, HOWEVER thier speeches hardly represented what these same guys have been saying for months now. Ted Kennedy calling Bush a lier who concocted a war for political gain, Howard Dean advancing a theory Bush knew about 9/11 ahead of time, Al Gore SCREECHING at the top of his lungs "He BETRAYED THIS COUNTRY!!" Where where THEY at? We saw them but they weren't the same people we have been seeing for the past several months. Now we have liberal media columnists (almost ALL of them are liberal) doing their best damage control, basically saying the RNC gave Bush a bounce because republicans are just better liers and that the speakers don't represent the platform. So what? Many republicans disagree with various things on the platform. The current STARS of the republican party were trotted out and frankly thats what the rebuplicans needed to show. Yes, indeed the republican party is a party with a wide range of diverse opinions and I believe that came across well to the American people. The republican party is changing and ready and willing to welcome many with differing opinions- even those with opinions that differ with the platform.
Umm. Not quite sure where to start. I do think you drank the Kool Aid though. Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean both spoke at the Democratic convention. I'll trust the men who served with a guy before I listen to folks who're getting paid off by career partisan hitmen and who can't seem to get their stories straight. And if there are such diverse opinions within the Republican party why does the platform come to just this side of a Pat Buchanan style xenophobic born-again rant? Moderates are the fringe element in the modern Republican party. The extremists own the place.
Just compare the two keynote speakers. Tells you everything you need to know about how these parties really see themselves.
Okay, that's it. Now you've done it. You've actually made my head explode out of sheer incomprehensible disbelief. Good work!
That Debra Saunders piece is pure bullshit. If the Iraq war had gone to plan, Bush would have been cruising into a second term on a wave of exhalted national pride. He's only a martyr to his own fuck ups, not for taking unpopular decisions.
Speaking of Pat Buchanan, he is rather pissed off at the foreign policies of the Bush administration:
http://tinyurl.com/5yah3
Once again I reiterate that we heard from some of the big STARS of the Republican party and these WILL be some of the folks in the upper positions of power in the future. For instance you can almost bank on the fact that in 2008 we will see either Juliani and/or McCain run for the republicans. These guys hardly agree with every platform issue. You say FRINGE, I say current INFLUENTIAL STARS. Thats a big difference. Ted Kennedy and Howard dean both spoke at the DNC, TRUE but where was all the rheteric they have been spewing for the past year? Thats the point I was making. Sure they spoke but they presented a picture thats HARDLY representative of what they have been for months: negative, foaming-at-the-mouth, Bush haters willing to smear the president in every way possible. Gore screaming "He BETRAYED this country, Kennedy calling him a lier who concocted a war for political gain, etc. They spoke but they talked very different from the people we have grown to know in the past several months, you know, the "Lunatic Left" of the democratic party.
Someone should have told the GOP Party Platform that, what with its "no abortions - ever", anti-gay, anti-judicial branch and all...
Those guys will never win a primary if there's a rightwing challenger. I think they're deluding themselves. And it's clear that in Congress the moderate Republicans seem barely tolerated by their extremist brethren. To understand why you need to understand that most congressmen have relatively safe seats. Redistricting has ensured partisan majorities. Even in main elections there's all too often not even a challenger because nobody wants to waste the time or resources. Because the most ideologically driven people tend to be the best organized and most involved in politics they, in many cases, dominate the party on a local and regional level. This might not be as true in the northeast as the south, for example, but it's true enough that you find critters like DeLay as Speaker of the House. Look at that "Bush by the numbers" thread and read the line about the voting power of the evangelicals. Assuming it's correct, and it certainly meshes with other reporting on the subject, I can't think of a single voting bloc more important to Republicans.
It seems to me that any real 'leftists' have long since abandoned the Democrats since they became a more moderate party under the Democratic Leadership Conference. These are The Greens and other independant voters. They go for Nader. That's the fringe, chief. The Republicans have put the rightwing fruitloops in charge. Ashcroft, Bush and DeLay are all over-the-top. Bush, unlike the other two, at least has political sense enough to try to appeal to swing voters but if you read much of what he has to say, that isn't calibrated for broadcast, he's one of 'em.
The moderates are figureheads that play well in Peoria but little more. Guiliani might do well but I suspect his moderate and even liberal views on social issues would make him vulnerable despite any heroic stature. The others have even less of a prayer, if you'll pardon the expression, in a Republican primary though vanity, I suspect, drives them to believe differently.
Yeah, well, I had a PR professor who pointed out that even nuts get things right once in a while. Buchanan was on C-SPAN just now and while his religious right and xenophobic tendancies still set my teeth on edge he's certainly got the neocons figured out. That's part of the problem though with this whole situation for me. While I'm trying to narrow the focus of my suspicions and accusations to Likud and the Israeli right there are folks out there who just don't do nuance, to borrow a phrase. And when the neocons defend their disingenous policies by calling anyone who challenges them anti-semitic it cheapens the word. If I was an Israeli I'd probably be trying to figure out how to put as much distance between my country and anyone involved with the neoconservatives as I humanly could. The consequences of losing United States support would be catastrophic.
On the other hand, I imagine why these tactics may have been seen as necessary by Likud. As we've discussed before, with the end of the Cold War our dependance on Israel as a potential ally in the Middle East is greatly diminished. It's largely sentiment as well as the significant Jewish American and Religious Right voting blocs in both parties that have continued our blaise attitude towards Israel and the Palestinians. I imagine folks in Israel don't like the idea of counting on sentiment to carry them through so they're determined to involve us as much as possible, militarily, in the region. This makes their position as our allies, in theory, more relevant but it also puts their enemies on the defensive and opens up a second front without the loss of a single Israeli soldier.
It makes sense but it's no solution especially if backroom manipulation and covert coordination are part of the package and the wars themselves, or just the war in Iraq for now, are based on premises the public will recognise as false. When the time comes for investigations and parcelling out the blame who's going to be scapegoated? The big American oil concerns? The Religious Right? Or a foreign country.
I won't say Buchanan is cynically positioning himself as his current statements seem in line with his historical stances. But he certainly is hoping to reap the political benefits when the current coalition between the Religious Right and the neoconservatives disintigrates and is even willing to publish a book during an election year to ensure he gets enough attention to be able to later say, "See I told you so." This at risk of hurting Bush's chances of election.
Yeah, but Brian, do you think Bush has any chance at all of losing the conservative religious vote? I don't think there's anything anyone could do to alienate that bloc from Bush - it's as set as the African American voting bloc for the Democrats.
If it looked like he was Rove'd grab him by them big chimp ears, Lyndon B. Johnson-style, and steer him on an intercept course. You'd see Wolfowitz get canned and Buchanan brought in as assistant Secretary of Defense.
But the feeling I get is that this whole issue is going to be so slow in evolving it won't blow up for several more months. If at all. That's also a possibility. I tend to be skeptical that the FBI and CIA are colluding on some kind of partisan witchhunt here but I'm certainly capable of believing the spinmeisters and beaurocratic jujitsu artists in the Bush Administration can make it go away and just dazzle the press as usual with fancy footwork and baffling bullshit. All else fails, invade Iran. Look at the headlines change!
What's interesting is that Bush only gets something around 70% of the Evangelicals.
There's a number of Christians who don't so much like war.
Clinton won the evalengical vote in '92 and '96.
OK, Jason, you've got to show me the data on this one. (I know you have it, BTW ;) )
Jason, when you say "evangelicals" do the stats your talking about include minority religious groups? Because if so, I can see that. Conservative religious minorities, I've read, actually do outnumber the "Christian Coaltion."
It must - I was just doing some searching after posting my note to Jason, and in a couple of articles there were stats such as this:
"However, Black Protestant voters, a majority of whom are Evangelical, voted 96 percent for Gore and only 4 percent for Bush." (That was from an article in PublicEye.org, FWIW.)
I always suspect stuff like this. I think you guys would have a hard time argreeing on what makes up an Evangelical or Fundimentalist Christian. I don't think either party has a lock on either faith group. I know a fair amount of both and their opinions are all over the place.
I tend to get sloppy in my terminology myself. By Religious Right, fundamentalists and evangelicals I mean the Christian Coalition and allied groups as well as those influenced by them. They seem to be the single most organized and influential political-religious bloc in the country and they are Republicans. It's certainly true that fundamentalist can apply to any religion and evangelicals have a broad array political stances.
And I think we can all agree that it's pretty clear Clinton didn't win that vote. :) But I wouldn't be surprised if he carried the vote when you use evangelical in the broader sense of the term.
-Tom
If you mean "Jerry Falwell types", of course Clinton didn't win that vote. I can't find that one article about how the evalengical vote is up for grabs, but the takeaway I remember is that of people who describe themselves as "evangelical" or whatever, Clinton won 'em.
The far right is a noisy subset apparently, but not even a majority.
Zogby to Newsweek poll: Drop dead.
Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place.
This is no small consideration. Given the fact that each candidate receives anywhere between eight in ten and nine in ten support from voters in his own party, any change in party identification trades point for point in the candidate's total support. My polls use a party weight of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican and 26% Independent. Thus in examining the Newsweek poll, add three points for Mr. Bush because of the percentage of Republicans in their poll, then add another 8% for Mr. Bush for the reduction in Democrats. It is not hard to see how we move from my two-point lead to their eleven-point lead for the President.
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