Let's try to summarize some trends, some punditry and some CW into a coherent whole.
GWB is an unpopular President whose failures as a leader are becoming CW. How do we know this?
- Pundits (this via Kurtz):
Peggy Noonan comes out and says that people have lost confidence in the president:
"Republicans hearken back to Reagan for two big reasons. The first is that they agreed with what he did. The second is that they believe he was a very fine man. This is not now how they feel about Mr. Bush, at least if my interactions with strangers and party members the past year are a judge. They think Mr. Bush is a good man--that he's got guts and resolve, that he can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. But they are no longer confident about what he does. They're no longer fully comfortable in their judgment of his policies and actions, or the root thoughts behind them. It gives Reagan an even rosier glow, for he was the last national political figure to fully win their minds and hearts.
"William F. Buckley this week said words that, if you follow his columns, were not surprising. And yet coming from the man who co-fathered the modern conservative movement, carrying the intellectual heft as Reagan carried the political heft, the observation that President Bush is not, philosophically, a conservative, had the power to make one sit up and take notice."
- Media Narrative, including more stories on unhappy soldiers and unhappy military towns
The environment favors Dems, but Republican negative attacks may help them in November even more than gerrymandering. How do we know this?
Why It's Too Early To Predict The House
I have been quite outspoken in arguing that the Democrats have a very good chance of winning the House in November, even with the structural problems they have because of the paucity of competitive districts.
National and district polling confirms that conclusion, as does the scarcity of upbeat GOP district polls.
But anyone who buys the early Democratic polls at face value is making a mistake. Many of these surveys measure the landscape, not the combatants, and we won't know how well Democratic candidates will do until much later in the year, possibly mid-October -- after Republicans have spent some of their sizable war chests on demonizing their opponents.
The Iraq War is the biggest issue this fall. How do we know this?
The Civil War In Iraq Will Not Get Better Before November. How do we know this?
Put all of it together, and you begin to get the picture. An unpopular President, dragging his party down in the polls, and insisting on fighting an unpopular war that he is not trusted to do competently, will have his party turn to vicious negative attack ads using whatever funds Republicans have. Nancy Johnson in CT-5 has already started, using the classic R tax-and-spend strategy against Chris Murphy (she can't run on her R leadership ties).
Will it work? maybe. it's worked before. But this isn't 2002 or even 2004, and on the whole, the R voters and defenders are a dispirited bunch. Meanwhile, D voters are psyched and motivated.
In two weeks, there's a primary in CT which will put the above to the test. After all, Lieberman is campaigning like a Republican (there you go again, he said to Lamont in the primary. Joe's the one with the negative campaign, as well). Chris Matthews has gone as far as saying that a vote for lieberman is a vote to endorse past and prtesent wars.
On August 8, we'll get a better feel for the lay of the land. And despite the general landscape, both sides will have to execute to win. And that's the real message for November.
crossposted at The Next Hurrah