WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE?

A question of confidence (Michael Barone, 7/14/03, US News)

A plausible scenario for the 2004 presidential election is beginning to emerge. It is set out in a recent memo by Republican pollster Bill McInturff titled "A Coming Bush Landslide in 2004?" McInturff's numbers are not much different from those in Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg's recent Democracy Corps memo titled "Hunting Season Is Here: A Time for Boldness." When a pollster calls for boldness, you know that he means that his side must turn opinion around. McInturff is careful to say that his scenario is not inevitable, just likely. Consumer confidence is high, and voters express warmer feelings toward Republicans than Democrats--a first since polling started in 1935. National security, a Bush issue, remains a paramount concern--and is likely to remain so through 2004.

The two parties have responded in different ways. Republicans in Washington are confident but aware that their majorities are small and conceivably vulnerable. They have passed a big tax cut, and both houses have passed Medicare/ prescription drug bills. Republicans around the country are united as they have not been since 1984 and are pouring record amounts of money into the Bush campaign. State-by-state and district-by-district analysis suggests that Republicans will probably win more seats in the Senate and House next year. [...]

Core Democrats have an emotional investment in the idea that George W. Bush is an idiot; if conservatives believe they are conservative because they have more common sense than other people, liberals believe they are liberal because they are smarter than other people. At the heart of their hatred of Bush is snobbery. Gephardt, Lieberman, Graham, and Edwards don't exude this snobbery. Dean and Kerry do. This could give whichever of them survives New Hampshire an edge with core Democrats. The Democrats' problem is that at least 70 percent of voters do not share their contempt for Bush and find it off-putting. Outside a Bush fundraiser last week one protester's sign read, "France was right." That is not a winning slogan in an American election.

It's taken them nine months but the politicos and pundits are starting to accept the idea that the elections of 2004 are setting up as a landslide of epic proportions. The most interesting indicator is the series of essays we've been noting where the Left argues not so much that they are smarter than the rest of us but that they are more decent than conservatives and that the Democrats are too nice to beat the evil GOP. This line of thought is even more dangerous than the intellectual arrogance that Mr. Barone is worried about, because it looks like they're consciously trying to whip up Democratic anger while American voters tend not to like this kind of politics of hate. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 7, 2003 12:41 PM