Wojtek S:
> The stupid fatheads that voted for
> him will
> >support him even more, blaming everything on government
> bureaucrats. That
> >is the Amrikun way - bad government good corporate and political
> bosses.
Tom W:
>Frankly, the whole exercise of
> polling is fraught with interpretative pitfalls. When a result is
> both
> ambiguous and paradoxical it doesn't make sense to put much stock
> in it.
> I would tend to split the difference of the somewhats and read the
> result as (roughly) 40% approve and 60% disapprove with a margin
> of
> error big enough to drive a truck through.
------------------------------
The NO disaster, like Iraq, will weigh on the Bush administration. But when next year's congressional elections roll around - unless there is another catastrophic event which coincides with them - the only numbers which will count are not today's ephemeral poll numbers, but those then relating to unemployment, interest rates, and real wages. If the latter are falling because of high gas prices and the other two are rising, I think the Republicans' mass base will evaporate, and you'll get a crossover by increasingly desperate working people who will put their material interests first - even from the religious right and even given the Democratic leadership's current rope-a-dope strategy which is demoralizing its own base. But it's a long way to November 2006, and, to paraphrase Chou in relation to the French Revolution, still way too early to draw conclusions.
MG