Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year

This is from CNN.Com:

(CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.

In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.

Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.

The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.

In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.

However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.

More than half, 57 percent, said they don't agree with the president's views on issues that are important to them, while 41 percent said their views are in alignment with those of Bush on important issues.

Well, this little poll doesn't bode too well for the Bush White House. When you have more than half the American public saying they don't agree with the president's views and would vote for a hypothetical Democrat in a presidential race, your administration is in pretty deep doo-doo. And the supposed Patrick Fitzgerald indictments haven't even been handed down yet. But it gets better. Continuing on:

On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).

Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.

In 2003, 53 percent said Republicans would better handle Iraq and only 29 percent believed the Democrats would do better.

The only issue on which Republicans came out on top was in fighting terrorism: 49 percent said the GOP is better at it, while 38 percent said the Democrats are.

So the public believes that the Democrats can do better on the issues of health care, Social Security, the economy, gas prices--and possibly energy policy as well. This is pretty much the entire domestic agenda for Bush. The only thing the Republicans can do better than the Democrats is in fighting terrorism--the Republican PR-spin machine is still adept in brainwashing the American public into believing they can do better at fighting terrorism, even though the entire invasion of Iraq was once defined as a goal in fighting terrorism. But now the public is starting to believe that the Democrats can do better in fighting in Iraq over the Republicans. So it may be just a matter of time before the Republicans advantage in fighting terrorism is lost to the Democrats. Also remember, this poll came out BEFORE any possible Fitzgerald indictments. So we don't know how the public will respond if Fitzgerald starts handing down indictments against Rove, Libby, or even Cheney, who are the top advisors to the president.

The Democrats have a golden opportunity here in defining a new agenda for the country. The American public is starting to realize that this country is heading down the wrong path. There is also a realization that this Bush White House has almost no clue in how to respond to events that are out of its spin-meister control. This is a White House that has become reactive, rather than pro-active. And if Rove and Libby are forced to resign due to indictments in the Valerie Plame affair, then the Bush administration loses more of its top political spin and marketing people who could have maintained control of the news events and the agenda. But the Democrats need to start acting now. They need to start proposing a radically new agenda to shift the course of this country. They need to start energizing the public's imagination with bold new ideas and new proposals to solve the nation's issues.

Now is the time to go on the offensive.