SW's Energy Gap: "But really, I think that this misses the big story here. That story is the utter collapse of George Bush. It must be the new "curse". Forget about the Bambino, it's the curse of the one-termers. Bush league, once and forever.
People are talking about the weak hand that Kerry will have should he prevail in this election. I would suggest that the real story is the weak hand that Bush will have if he squeaks out a victory. First, consider that on ideological grounds we are about evenly split between left and right. So you start from a partisan base of half the electorate. After 9/11 most of the other half of the electorate decided to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. To trust him to work his ass off in the best interest of the country and to forget about partisan politics.
Instead he fucked them. He used the drive to war in Iraq as a club to stifle dissent and to paint his opposition as unpatriotic. The tactics they used in 2002 to gain control of the Senate tells you all you need to know about the character of these people. So now, half of the population doesn't just oppose George Bush or support his opponent. They loathe George Bush because he personally betrayed them. And there is nothing, not a damn thing that this guy can ever do in the future to change that.
But even worse for Bush is the problem he has with his supporters. If you read the study that was done by the University of Maryland concerning the misconceptions Bush's supporters are operating under, it would seem to be a house built on sand. I remember a famous unguarded moment when Bush was quoted as saying "You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool some of the people all of the time. And those are the people we're looking for". Back then it just sounded like a sort of smart-ass crack. Today, it seems like the blueprint for his presidency".