The final New York Times/CBS News poll before next week’s mid-term elections has some extremely bad news for President George Bush and the Republican party:
A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday, and say Republicans would maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill, according to the final New York Times/CBS News poll before the midterm election.
The bad news is clear. Those Americans who want a change in policy are more likely to vote Democrat. AND:
The poll found that just 29 percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is managing the war in Iraq, matching the lowest mark of his presidency.
Yet another bad sign. But it gets worse:
Nearly 70 percent of Americans said Mr. Bush did not have a plan to end the war, and an overwhelming 80 percent said Mr. Bush’s latest effort to rally public support for the conflict amounted to a change in language but not policy.
So it sounds as if most Americans for some reason (could it have been the existence of videotape?) did not believe Bush when he asserted that his administration’s policy was never “stay the course.” MORE:
The poll underlined the extent to which the war has framed the midterm elections. Americans cited Iraq as the most important issue affecting their vote, and majorities of Republicans and Democrats said they wanted a change in the government’s approach to the war. Only 20 percent said they thought the United States was winning in Iraq, down from a high of 36 percent in January.
Is it possible that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity don’t reflect the thinking of the majority of Americans these days?
Meanwhile, the poll contains another tidbit that is an ominous warning sign for GOPers who are staunch defenders of the administration:
In a year when there are many close races, and where the parties’ success at turning out their voters could prove key, Democrats were more enthusiastic than Republicans about voting and more likely to say they would support their party’s candidates, though Republicans were slightly more likely to say they would turn out.
Fifty percent of independent voters, a closely watched segment of the electorate in such polarized times, said they intended to vote for the Democratic candidate, versus 23 percent who said they would vote for a Republican.
We have said it repeatedly: watch the independent voters because the GOP could not have won its elections over the past few years if it had independent voters generally breaking against it on election day. AND:
Among registered voters, 33 percent said they planned to support for Republicans, and 52 percent said they would vote for Democrats. As a rule, these kind of generic questions — while providing broad insights into the national mood — are often imprecise as a predictor of the outcome of hundreds of Congressional races, where local issues and personalities can shape the result.
Coming at the conclusion of a contentious midterm campaign, voters said that neither Democrats nor Republican had offered a plan for governing should they win on Tuesday, the poll found. Yet Americans have some clear notions of how government might change if Democrats win control of Congress: Beyond a quicker exit from Iraq, respondents said they thought a Democratic Congress would be more likely to increase the minimum wage, hold down rapidly rising health and prescription drugs costs, improve the economy and — as Republicans have said frequently in these closing days of the campaign — raise taxes.
In other words: it sounds like the Democrats have gotten their message across — and so have the Republicans.
So what will trump what? Will fear of higher taxes negate concerns about the war? Then there’s this:
Forty-one percent of respondents said they expected troop levels in Iraq would decrease if Democrats win, while another 40 percent said the party would seek to remove all troops. Forty-one percent said they expected troop levels to remain the same if Republicans win, while 29 percent said they thought the United States would send more troops in if the Republicans continue to control Congress.
So if this poll is accurate, at a time when Bush’s job approval ratings are at an all time low, the war is increasingly unpopular and a large number of people polled think that if the Republicans hold onto Congress not much will change.
Do you think Bush’s statement yesterday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is doing a “fantastic” job and will serve during Bush’s final two years will help reverse some of the numbers in this poll? And, given this context, would these voters who seem to have their minds made up change their votes because of the flap over Senator John Kerry’s bout of political foot-in-mouth disease?
ALSO READ Democrat Wesley Clark’s post HERE at the Huffington Post where he says Americans cannot be distracted from the key issue in this election. A small taste 4 U:
Polls show a distinct and steady decline in public support for the war effort, and, more ominously, increasingly the American public has begun to doubt that the invasion of Iraq is in any way connected to winning the war on terror. Sitting Congressmen began to distance themselves from the President, the White House signalled that its “Stay the Course” motto was being refined, and more and more Republicans began to call for Rumsfeld’s resignation. The vast majority of Americans wanted to see America succeed in its mission in Iraq, and now that seems increasingly unlikely. Democrats offered a more realistic, accurate appraisal of the situation, but there are no panaceas at this point. To many, every alternative seemed simplistic, wrong-headed, or even more prone to failure.
In such a forbidding public dialogue, is it any wonder that John Kerry’s blunder is being used to distract us? But how frightening and sad for America if we let this continue. How much easier to attack personalities and resurrect stereotypes than to deal with the grim realities of the Administration’s national security predicament! The truth is that America’s armed forces are badly overcommitted, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated beyond the ability of our best generals and bravest troops to correct, Afghanistan is sliding into a long-term insurgency which spells failure for the minimalist US commitment there, and both North Korea and Iran are ratcheting tensions. For a political party that fancies itself as the national security party, their cup runneth over with problems, many of their own making.
Read the whole thing.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.