The Bush Poll Numbers Continue to Slide

Can't make myself watch El Presidente on TV last night tell us that all is well in Iraq, that everything's on track, that he's got a plan, so I have to gather my impressions as best I can, and I gather it was less than a home run, and according to the gasbags on "Cross Fire" and elsewhere, including most especially the right-wing gasbags, if President Bush didn't hit a home run, he might as well have not taken his turn at bat. Something like that.

Meanwhile, another prominent Republican member of the N.C. State House resigned from the state Republican executive committee to protest the treatment of Robert Morgan. (Some witches elect to leave the village before the mob can get to them.)

Ruy Teixeira has a steady stream of worsening poll numbers on Bush's performance to cluck over, and he may yet make a believer out of us. Teixeira discusses new numbers from the Annenberg Election Survey showing that fully 50 percent of all respondents disapprove of the president's handling of the war on terrorism, which has heretofore been his strong suit. The so-called "internals" from this particular poll are even worse for Bush in that independents, young voters, and Hispanics -- some of the notorious swing voters -- give him much more negative marks for handling the war on terror. The war in Iraq? Bush is doing much worse there, with 75 percent of Hispanics, for example, saying it was not worth going to war. Seventy-five percent negative among a voting bloc that Karl Rove had planned to split with the Democrats!

Into this tasty cake dough Teixeira blends a new CBS poll that shows that 65 percent of respondents think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Teixeira quotes from the CBS analysis: "The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades."

We want to believe but are wary. As this kind of evidence continues to mount up -- and as the witch hunt against moderates in the North Carolina Republican Party claims more casualties -- we may find it impossible NOT to develop a sunny attitude toward our prospects in this coming election, from the local bozo county commissioner level up through state government and on to Washington!