THEY CAN HAVE MASSACHUSETTS

Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds (ROBIN TONER, 8/04/03, NY Times)

While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election -- the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center -- something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.

There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him -- straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data. [...]

Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.

Some compare it to the hostility conservatives long harbored toward President Bill Clinton.

It hardly needs mentioning--except that the article strangely doesn't--that both Presidents Nixon and Clinton easily won re-election. Disdain for an incumbent president is neither a unifying force for a party nor a winning platform to run a general election on. In essence, you're telling the American people that they were stupid for electing him. You may be right, but stupid doesn't want to hear it. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2003 12:33 AM