One year out from the 2008 election, Americans are deeply pessimistic and eager for a change in direction from the agenda and priorities of President Bush, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Concern about the economy, the war in Iraq and growing dissatisfaction with the political environment in Washington all contribute to the lowest public assessment of the direction of the country in more than a decade. Just 24 percent think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a course that is different than that pursued by Bush.
Overwhelmingly, Democrats want a new direction, but so do three-quarters of independents and even half of Republicans. Sixty percent of all Americans said they feel strongly that such a change is needed after two terms of the Bush presidency.
Dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq remains a primary drag on public opinion, and Americans are increasingly downcast about the state of the economy. More than six in 10 called the war not worth fighting, and nearly two-thirds gave the national economy negative marks. The outlook going forward is also bleak: About seven in 10 see a recession as likely over the next year.
This is a huge poll. First, the poll comes out just before the holiday season, and it reveals that Americans are pessimistic about the future of where this country is heading. We've got three-quarters of the American public favoring a different course for the country, than what President Bush has charted, and 60 percent of all Americans feel strongly that a change is needed after the Bush presidency. Even more interesting is that there is a clear majority of Democrats, independents, and half of Republicans favoring a change. Americans want change.
And here is where the 2008 presidential elections are going to become a nasty fight. In a sense, the 2008 elections will be a referendum on the Bush legacy. Bush is stepping down in January, 2009. The problems this country faces with the economy, Iraq, health care, high energy prices, inflation, will be the result of the Bush administration's irresponsibility and incompetence at dealing with these issues. Consider the WaPost results on Bush's job approval here:
Overall, the public's sour mood is evident not only in the desire for a change in direction but also in assessments of those who control the reins of power in Washington. For the fourth consecutive month, Bush's approval rating remains at a career low. Thirty-three percent said they approve of the job he is doing, and 64 percent disapprove. Majorities have disapproved of Bush's job performance for more than 2 1/2 years.
What is interesting here is that both political parties will use the Bush legacy to advance their presidential candidates. The Democrats will use the voter's anger against the Bush administration to pitch a question--Do you really want another four-to-eight years of Republican corruption in the White House after Bush? The Democrats are going to attempt to paint the Republican candidates as "Bush lite" candidates, who will continue to take the country down the same, disastrous path that President Bush is leading this country into. For the Republicans, it will be much more difficult. The GOP candidates will try to distance themselves away from the Bush legacy, without seeming to abandon the core 30-percent conservative base that still supports the Bush administration. In fact, Republican pollsters are saying that the 2008 vote will not be a referendum on the Bush administration, but rather about two completely new candidates. Consider this from the WaPost:
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said, "It is a political environment pretty heavily tilted toward the Democrats." One hope, he added, is that an early end to the GOP nominating battle will allow the winner time "to put the current administration in the rearview mirror, placing the focus on the nominee's candidacy and agenda."
[...]
Stuart Stevens, a media adviser to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, said no Republican candidate will argue next year that the country is in great shape, but he discounted the effectiveness of running against Bush in the fall of 2008. "A year from now, it's not going to be a referendum on President Bush, it's going to be a choice between two candidates," he said.
But there is a problem with this GOP viewpoint that the election will be about two new candidates--the Republican Party has been decimated by the disastrous policies and incompetence of the Bush administration. The Republican Party has been tarnished by President Bush. Consider this from the WaPost:
Whatever their dissatisfaction with the Democrats, however, a majority of Americans, 54 percent, said they want the party to emerge from the 2008 election in control of Congress; 40 percent would prefer the GOP to retake power. One reason is that 32 percent approve of congressional Republicans, and in a series of other measures it becomes clear that the eventual Republican nominee for president may be burdened by a tarnished party label in the general election.
Thirty-nine percent of Americans said they now have a favorable impression of the Republican Party, lower than at any point since December 1998, when Republicans were in the midst of impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton.
Among the GOP rank and file, Republican favorability has fallen 15 percentage points since March 2006 (from 93 percent to 78 percent). It has dropped 19 points among independents, whose support for Democratic candidates in last year's midterm elections contributed significantly to GOP losses in the House and the Senate.
Only 23 percent of those surveyed said they want to keep going "in the direction Bush has been taking us," and the appetite for change is as high as it was in the summer of 1992, in the lead-up to Bill Clinton's defeat of President George H.W. Bush. It is significantly higher than it was in the summer of 2000 or the fall of 1988.
The Republican Party is no longer a favorable party now. I'm guessing that the 15 percentage point drop among the rank-and-file GOP voters are mainly from the Religious Right, and their distaste among the top four presidential candidates. The independents have left the GOP, and voted Democrat in the 2006 congressional elections. And Americans seem to want the Democrats to continue to maintain control of Congress after 2008, considering the 32 percent approval rating that is given for congressional Republicans is lower than the 36 percent approval rating that is given to the congressional Democrats. For the past seven years, the Republican congressmen have been goose-stepping to the Bush administration's orders, even at the risk of angering their own constituents, and their own political careers. Now the voter's anger is starting to register against the GOP congressmen. If the Republican congressmen continue down this destructive path of blindly following the Bush administration's failed policies through 2008, we could see quite a few of these GOP congresscritters standing in the unemployment lines.
There is a lot more details in this WaPost poll, but I'm going to stop here for the moment. The important factor to consider is that a clear majority of Americans want some type of change away from the failed policies of this Bush administration. If the current economic situation, and the Iraq war, continue to worsen, then we're going to see a greater number of Americans demanding change in 2008. And with President Bush and the Republican Party in the White House, I'm not sure how this could help them in the 2008 presidential elections.
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