INDEX OF LEADING POLITICAL INDICATORS:

Wellstone pulls ad (Greg Pierce, September 13, 2002, Washington Times)

Sen. Paul Wellstone, Minnesota Democrat, has withdrawn a fund-raising ad from a Web site that denigrates President Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on September 11.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Democrats.com, a Web site co-founded by a former staffer in the Clinton White House, reproduced a picture of Mr. Bush talking on the phone on September 11, and sponsored a contest for the best caption indicating what Mr. Bush may have been saying.

The first entry in the caption contest has Mr. Bush saying: "But Dick, I soiled my pants when I learned about the attacks, so please just let me come back to Washington for a change of underwear."

"The 30 other published entries are similarly derogatory," Star Tribune reporters Eric Black and Greg Gordon said.

The Web site has raised "a considerable amount of money" for Mr. Wellstone's campaign, one of its founders told the newspaper.

The political Web site began experimenting with a pop-up Wellstone ad during the past 10 days, but Wellstone aides had it yanked Wednesday after Republicans drew attention to it, the newspaper said.

Wellstone spokesman Jim Farrell said the campaign, which paid $3,371 for services from the site, knew nothing about the offensive content and pulled the ad as soon as it was brought to their attention.

If you want to know what's politically popular and what's unpopular you can't do better than watch how congressmen up for re-election behave, what issues they talk about, what parts of their record they emphasize, etc.. Paul Wellstone's sudden fear of being associated with the openly anti-Bush Democrats.com is a pretty good indicator that, contrary to the slew of late summer stories saying his popularity had collapsed, Mr. Bush remains a pretty popular wartime leader. Someone better tell Tom Daschle soon or endangered Democrats like Mr. Wellstone are going to be in real trouble in November.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2002 3:28 PM