«Against this backdrop [mounting costs in Iraq campaign], President George W. Bush's approval ratings continue to decline. His current approval rating of 53 percent is down 18 percent from April. And for the first time since the question was initially asked last fall, more registered voters say they would not like to see him re-elected to another term as president (49 percent) than re-elected. Forty-four percent would favor giving Bush a second term; in April, 52 percent backed Bush for a second term and 38 percent did not.»
--Newsweek: When Enough is Enough?
When it becomes trendy for 2-bit standup hacks and latenight talkshow hosts to disparage the Bush Administration as a pack incompetent, crypto-fascists and no-talent ass clowns, remember that some of us have been beating this drum consistantly since the 2000 "election."
Good luck actually finding an opponent that people will really vote for. I think you'll find that Bush pretty much destroys, head to head, any of the parade of midgets that the Democrats have come up with so far.
As for incompentent... no-talent ass clowns... The Bush Whitehouse has serious people in it, like Chaney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice. I think they compare quite favorably to the angry twenty-somethings and political hacks (Ron Brown, for example) that populated the Clinton Whitehouse. Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton's first Secretary of Treasury, was a serious person, but he reportedly was upset at not being taken seriously enough by the Clinton Whitehouse which led to his leaving.
some of us have been beating this drum consistantly since the 2000 "election."
Surely three years is long enough to find out how the Electoral College works. It's been around for two-hundred years; its workings really shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone eligible to vote.
Re:Nearly Three Years
jamiemccarthy on 2003-08-28T20:44:24
Hi, Chromatic!It's not the electoral college that was at fault. Gore received more votes in Florida (despite the undercouting of poor people's votes due to poor and confusing technology, and despite the GOP's illegally stripping the right to vote from tens of thousands of citizens -- those being the only two reasons that the count was even close).
And this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who bothered to follow the news.
But the GOP delights in blaming the voters themselves as being "stupid"... when in fact the simple act of voters following the instructions they were given, in just one county, cost Gore the Presidency:
In Duval County, which includes Jacksonville in the northeast corner of the state, a remarkable 21,855 ballots were invalidated because voters chose more than one presidential candidate. The county's official sample ballot erroneously instructed voters to "vote all pages." With 10 presidential candidates spread across two pages, following that instruction produced an overvote.
Of those voters who made the mistake of voting once on each page, the study found that 7,794 voted for Gore (plus another candidate), while 4,705 voted for Bush (plus another). That's a potential net for Gore of 3,089 votes, enough to carry the entire state.
That's why people refer to the 2000 debacle as an "election," in quotes. It was a banana-republic screwup of unbelievable proportions. What is known is that more Florida voters went to the polls intending to cast their votes for Gore -- and despite many of them being illegally turned away, more of them got into the voting booth and cast ballots, to the best of their ability, for Gore. The ballots were just plain miscounted, allegedly due to lack of time (unbelievable though that excuse may seem).
These are the plain facts and I'm a little surprised that anyone still hasn't learned them.
Re:Nearly Three Years
chromatic on 2003-08-28T22:32:33
those being the only two reasons that the count was even closeIt takes some combination of a lot of knowledge and a lot of confidence to make that kind of statement. I wouldn't want to put myself out that far.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I'm of the opinion that tampering with voting should be punished as harshly as possible. However, in the absence of perfectly accurate and clear voting (in other words, in practice), you have to do the best you can. Changing the rules after votes have been cast (and counted) would be even more of a fiasco.
Besides that, my point was that anyone who brings up national popular vote numbers is a twit and should be ignored as such.
