If you look over recent polls, the results are surprising, and a bit perplexing. For example, in a poll just completed the other day, CBS News asked the question, ""In general, do you think the policies of the Bush Administration favor the rich, favor the middle class, favor the poor, or do they treat all groups the same?" (CBS News Poll. Nov. 10-12, 2003. N=1,000 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.) 63 percent said Putsch favored the rich. Nine percent said he favored the middle class. And only one percent said he favored the poor. If you assume that only 10% of Americans are rich, that means that about 40% of Americans who aren’t rich think he favors the rich at their expense – and support him anyway. Another 23% temporized, and said he treats all classes equally. You can be pretty sure that when a chunk of the population give that answer on a question where the majority are so clearly decided, it simply means they don’t have a clue, and are just giving what they consider a judicious answer but is in fact an utterly ignorant one.
Back at the end of September, CBS also asked its respondents, "Do you have confidence in George W. Bush's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, or are you uneasy about his approach?" Putsch was trailing in that one by a 45-50 margin, and given the large number of US casualties and the damning CIA report that declared that the Resistance in Iraq had grown to an estimated 50,000, and the US stood to completely lose control (the actual phrase the CIA used) of the situation, it’s a wonder it wasn’t lower. Indeed, the White House realized that his domestic support threatened to crumble over that as casualties soared to well over 400 dead and at least 7,000 injured or otherwise disabled in the war. (That "otherwise disabled," consisting of thousands of troops with symptoms that sound suspiciously like they inhaled depleted uranium, may yet be the biggest lingering afterstory of the war.)
His overall support, of course, is in the low fifties, and you have to wonder about the people who think he’s screwed us up in Iraq but support him. Are they members of al-Qaida sleeper cells, or just that stupid? Hopefully, most of them are just stupid.
Another poll asked if Putsch had the same priorities as the country. 56% said he didn’t, and only 41% said he did. Again, a sizeable percentage both believe that Putsch is working at cross purposes to America’s best interests and simultaneously support him. Do they hate America, or do they just have coleslaw for brains?
Perhaps the strangest one was the CBS poll from early September that asked people the question, "Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with George W. Bush on the issues that matter most to you." By a 51-46 margin, they didn’t agree with him. Apparently quite a few of them haven’t gotten the word that it’s ok to oppose an elected official with whom you disagree.
Polls consistently show Putsch trailing in opinion on everything from the war, to his handling of the economy, to his ability to work with other nations, his "war on terror," his treatment of the military, his environmental record, the budget, and even that old Republican mainstay, controlling the growth of government. (With good reason: the federal government has grown by an astonishing 27% in the two and a half years since he took office.)
Liberals like to sit around and grouse about people who support him because they are corrupt, or ignorant, or in the case of the religious right, both. But to me, the most worrisome are the ones that know Putsch is incompetent, bad for the country, bad for them, and screwing things up massively – and support him anyway. If you assume that only a very tiny minority of that group are, in fact, hoping that he’ll destroy America and/or the freedoms of Americans, that leaves a fairly large chunk of the population who have simply abdicated any and all pretense to integrity. If the polls have it right, somewhere between 10 and 20 million voters know Putsch is screwing everything up – and simply don’t give a wet shit. In the case of the outing of the CIA operative, four out of five people agree it was probably treason, and two out of three think someone in the White House did it. Which means that millions of people think there are traitors in the White House, but support them anyway.
If Robert A. Heinlein were alive today, he would doubtlessly snort disgustedly and observe that some people shouldn’t be allowed to run loose without a leash. A Small Mouth Libertarian (not to be confused with the annoying Big Mouth Libertarians of the far right), Heinlein would be horrified, but unsurprised, at the state of America today. After all, in his famous "Future History" series, he had America falling to the religious fruitloops and becoming a tyrannical theocracy just about . . . oh . . .now. He wrote that some fifty years ago, and he figured it would come about eventually because the religious zanies would find someone housebroken enough to market to the masses. Reagan turned out not to be crazy enough, but George fit the bill nicely.
It’s pretty unlikely, though, that he would have envisioned a propaganda machine so well-lubricated that it not only manages to convince the public of things that are not true (Iraq being an imminent threat, for example), but even keeps the public convinced after the original assertion is admitted to be not true. (A lot of people still believe Saddam was involved in 9/11, even though the White House has admitted this is not the case). He would have been utterly flabbergasted to learn that the right wing had managed to convince working stiffs that it was in their best interest to let the wealthy and the corporations loot the national treasury in the hopes that the beneficiaries might pass a little of the wealth along, despite there not being even the tiniest shred of evidence that this ever happened, or ever would happen.
Still, before we write the voters off as hopeless morons, it’s worth noting that the Pew Research people conducted a gigantic poll of some 40,000 voters over the past few months asking about various voter attitudes and culminating in a report, "The Political Landscape of 2004" (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=196).
The report notes that the electorate is divided 50-50 between the parties, and deeply polarized, which isn’t exactly news to anyone.
However, Ruy Teixeira wrote an opinion piece for Tompaine.com entitled "Ditching the Party" in which he pointed out something that is an indication that voter blindness is ending: independents and Democrats are moving closer together, and further apart from Republicans. Since the self-identification breakdown among voters is 31% equally for Republican, Democrat, and Independent, this shift among independents is a key to breaking the electoral logjam in the 2004 election – assuming, of course, the Republicans at Diebold permit an honest and fair election.
There is another factor to consider that lays behind this sea change. For years, the radical right of the GOP have described themselves as "conservative" when in fact they were nothing of the sort.
There’s a tendency to pigeonhole: Democrats as liberal, Republicans as conservative, independents as moderate. The reality is considerably more complex. Both parties for many years ran the full gamut, and even today there are conservative Democrats, and even a few liberal Republicans. Independents, of course, is a broad term that covers people from all over the map.
In reality, however, conservative and liberal Americans share many of the same core values. Both sides believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Both sides believe in due process of law, and that all are equal before the courts. Both sides are environmentalists, although conservatives prefer the term "conservationalist."
The radical right shares none of these core values. While waving flags vigorously and proclaiming themselves to be conservative, they are, in fact, radical, and have launched widespread attacks against many of these American institutions.
Thus many conservatives find themselves reading about people who have co-opted their self-described political philosophy to engage in such heresies as explosive growth in government (27% in Putsch’s first three years), unprovoked wars against non-aggressor nations, the Patriot Act, pressure against the right to representation in court, ranging from ongoing attacks against making legal counsel available for the indigent to "tort reform" – the stripping away of redress of grievances. Most conservatives are appalled at the contempt this administration shows for open government and accountability, and leery of the strange religious whacks like Ashcroft, DeLay and Hatch.
As a result, while Republican support remains level among moderates and self-described conservatives, the fact is that on core value issues, the Republicans are moving further and further away from the American mainstream – and that mainstream is beginning to notice.
I don’t expect much movement among self-described moderates, since in polls, most moderates are the same people who say "treat all classes equally"– they are people who don’t have a stance, and/or don’t know what the stances of their elected reps are, and "moderate" sounds more thoughtful than saying, "whatever, dude."
However, and the Pew Survey makes it clear, there is a widening gap between the GOP and self-described conservatives, who are not amused at the admin’s record on government growth, deficit spending, Iraq, trade, or any of a dozen other issues.
George and the GOP made big gains from 9/11. But in their anxiousness to exploit those gains through the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq, they not only galvanized the left, but they alienated the real conservatives.
And the right wing whacks, with only the tepid support of moderates, will find the alignment has gone from 31-31-31 to something like 60-40.
Even with Diebold, it’s hard to win when you trail among voters like that.