An attorney friend (similar to my sister and brother-in-law and actually a lot of Americans) raising two children who is among the busiest human beings whom I know would ask me during the 2004 presidential campaign for reports on whether Bush would get beat by the democratic nominee. [We both hoped so.]
So, I would offer my analysis (too long and often borrowing from Roy Teixeira) that would always end in his “So, Bush is going to lose, right?” Or, something like: Who is voting for this idiot?
The friend, like a lot of Americans, had the idea that Bush might run up trillion dollar debts, drag on a war and an occupation, stack the courts with liberty-hating rightwingers and inflict damage to the environment and education, social security, Medicare (and basically every aspect of government).
He also found it difficult to believe that anybody could vote for such an intellectual dolt as Bush, and yet was fearful that many Americans of the Iraq-caused-911, evolution-is-wrong, the-gays-are-coming, and blacks-and-browns-oughta-stay-in-their-place variety would indeed vote for Bush.
Putting aside the fact that I blew my 2004 prediction (though evidence does point to the election being stolen in Ohio and Florida), this is the first of a recurring feature pointing to evidence and analyses that the Republicans will lose in 2008:
GOP Faces Growing Peril In 2008 Races
Senate Prospects Dimming
By Jonathan Weisman and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com Staff WriterSunday, September 2, 2007
A Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the resignation of scandal-scarred Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).
Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner's retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them -- in Virginia and Colorado -- are prime targets for Democrats.
With former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey possibly waiting in the wings, Republicans are anxiously watching to see whether Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will retire. And two more Republican seats open for reelection -- in Wyoming and Idaho -- would be occupied by unelected appointees, John Barrasso and Craig's replacement.
"The state of the playing field looks very good, even in places where we didn't expect it to look good, even in deeply red states," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Things could change, but if you did a snapshot, we're going to have a good year."
"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Sour Americans hungry for change as election '08 approaches
By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers
DES MOINES, Iowa — A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country's course.
Most lean left, a U.S. population more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.
Still, some want to turn farther right, demanding that the country fence off its Southern border, expel illegal immigrants and rein in a federal government grown fat under a Republican government they now dismiss as incompetent.
One thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They're deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There's virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton's in 2000.
The yearning to chart a new course is national:
Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.
Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.
The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s — dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.
The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.
"People are very unhappy, very unsettled,'' said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.
Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.
2008 will be a great election for Democrats in the Senate.
Red Dawn
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online Post date 08.31.07
Overall, the Democrats will have an advantage in 2008 in having to defend far fewer seats than the Republicans. Only twelve seats held by Democrats will be up compared to 22 for Republicans. And several of those Republicans were elected during the peculiar post-9/11 circumstances of the 2002 election, when President Bush used his immense popularity and the threat of a terrorist attack to boost the chances of several Republican underdogs.
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