Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds
Y'all might want to be sitting down for this one, but apparently Liberals are harboring an intense dislike for Shrub and his politics. (I know, I was shocked as well....)
DES MOINES, July 31 — While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election — the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center — something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.
There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him — straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data.
It is not simply a lurch to the left, many Democrats say; it could, in fact, lead caucus voters to more centrist candidates, if they seem most likely to defeat Mr. Bush in the general election....
Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.
Some compare it to the hostility conservatives long harbored toward President Bill Clinton. For the past two and a half years, after all, a fairly consistent 38 percent of respondents in The New York Times/CBS News Poll have said that Mr. Bush was not legitimately elected president.
Yes, Shrub "won" the 2000 Presidential election, but I've felt for some time that the right Democratic candidate could turn that victory into a Pyrrhic one. It could still happen. Shrub looks decidedly less Presidential and invincible now than at any time since 9.11. Perhaps having to actually govern is proving to be more than he bargained for. Karma can be a bitch, no? We can only hope....
