September 8, 2010

Please send me your comments!

By Dave Andrusko

Good evening. I hope you had a great Labor Day. Part Two discusses the regrettable turnabout of editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad, who died over the weekend. Part Three is a wonderfully encouraging story about pro-life camps. Over at National Right to Life News Today (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), you'll read a critique of a pro-abortion critique of pro-life Sarah Palin and a criticism of ObamaCare by a group of physicians. Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

Going back to just about forever, Labor Day has traditionally been pegged as the point at which the political season really begins--the "official start of the last lap toward the November elections," as the Wall Street Journal's Mary Lu Carnevale put it yesterday.

But at the risk of stating the superabundantly obvious, this characterization misses the simple, undeniable reality of 2010. While it is true that beginning this week more citizens will dial up the November elections, a large swathe of the citizenry is already thorough engaged. And they are in the mood for change.

Here are few headlines and lead paragraphs from recent stories.

"Republicans are heading into the final weeks of the midterm campaign with the political climate highly in their favor, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Americans are increasingly frustrated by a lack of economic progress, deeply dissatisfied with the federal government and critical of President Obama's leadership."
     -- From "Republicans making gains against Democrats ahead of midterm elections," by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen which appeared in today's Washington Post.

"Bad news in the polls has become the norm for President Obama and congressional Democrats as the midterm elections draw near, and a batch of new surveys show Obama's approval rating at a low ebb, high negatives for his handling of the economy and a continued trend toward the Republicans in the fight for Congress."
     -- From" New Wave of Polls Brings Bad News for Obama and the Democrats," which appears today at Politics Daily. And most important in many ways,

"A handful of House Democrats are making health care reform an election year issue -- by running against it. At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party's health care reform bill are highlighting their "no" votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can't identify a single House member who's running an ad boasting of a 'yes' vote -- despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March. One Democratic strategist said it would be 'political malfeasance" to run such an ad now. '"
     -- From "Dems run away from health care," by Jennifer Haberkorn, which ran in Politico on Saturday.

What does this tell us?

From our single-issue perspective, Politico's story just reinforces what we said at the time Obama and his fellow pro-abortionists who run the House and Senate jammed this monstrosity down our collective throat: the people would never buy into this pro-abortion, pro-rationing, economically suicidal mess.

According to Politico, " [I]t appears that no Democratic incumbent -- in the House or in the Senate -- has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one." This situation, Jennifer Haberkorn observes, is "a far cry from where Democrats hoped they would be when they passed the landmark legislation in March. Many senior Democrats said last winter that the law's popularity would increase as Americans were able to better understand the complex law and take advantage of its benefits."

The Post's article this morning uses as source material a Post/ABC News survey. There are some variations, but in general the survey of 1,002 adults is consistent from the polls we discussed the last couple of weeks. To wit,

* The advantage Democrats have enjoyed on major issues has evaporated. Sometimes the margin over Republicans has just dramatically shrunk, sometimes the GOP is now trusted more.

* Obama's approval ratings continue to plunge. It's not just that the antis outnumber the pros by 52% to 46%. It's that the strongly disapproving are far ahead of the strongly approving--38% to 24%. Moreover, "On two big issues, disapproval of the president's performance has reached new highs: Fifty-seven percent now disapprove of his handling of the economy and 58 percent give him low marks on dealing with the deficit," Balz and Cohen write. Two other hightlights.

· [On the all-important "generic ballot" question] "Among all voters, 47 percent say they would back the Republican in their congressional district if the election were held now, while 45 percent would vote for the Democrat," essentially a dead-heat. But the far more important point follows immediately in the Post story: "Any GOP advantage on this question has been rare in past years--and among those most likely to vote this fall, the Republican advantage swells to 53 percent to the Democrats' 40 percent. "

· Finally, Balz and Cohen observe, "Overall, by a 13-point margin, independent voters say they would support Republican over Democratic candidates in their House districts. A majority of independents--59 percent--say they would prefer to have Republicans in charge of Congress to serve as a check on the president's agenda."

Message? Voters are telling Democrats that to hitchyour wagon to the Obama/ ObamaCare star is a really bad decision.

Part Two
Part Three