One of the enduring--if paradoxical--political values in America is mistrust of the federal government.  This is much broader and more heartfelt--and therefore more useful--than some of the purposes it has been put to.  

By combining several together several sub-themes, Democrats could--if they were consistent--start to use some of this anti-Washington sentiment to advantage.

Some of you, like me, may come from families that fish or hunt and yet still are liberal on economic and social issues.  If you, you should make sure to read this.

Bush Wins the Cabela's Election
http://slate.msn.com/id/2106735/

The Cabela's flagship store in western Nebraska were a frequent stop-over for my family on our trips west to fish, and as the company has spread out I have frequently visited it and recommended it to others.

After reading the Slate piece, I wrote to Cabela's to ask them why they would alienate their many customers who vote Democratic or who are independents, especially since the incumbent president has devoted himself to wiping out fishing and hunting grounds in the upper Midwest, Alaska, and the far west.  

If there are other Cabela's customers here, I suggest you visit their customer service center at:

http://cabelas.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/cabelas.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

The main parts of the Gallup/USA Today/CNN poll have already been discussed but I had some off-to-the-side responses to it that I'd post here.

1) According to the Gallup breakdown, about 15% of the respondents said that Baby was "too liberal." Now, I'm not surprised that SOME people find Bush too liberal. There is always a fringe. Some John Birchers thought Eisenhower was, literally, a Communist, after all. That said, 15% strikes me as amazingly high, given the last couple of years. This isn't a few diehards sending around mimeographed cartoons of the Pope and Stalin; this is a large number of people. And those are the very people that Ragin' Roy Moore could speak to. Run, Roy, Run. Would he get them all? Of course not. But he could get a few.

Earlier this week, the Annenberg Center here in Philly ran a poll about the effectiveness of a few key political messages. Not just any messages, though. The Annenberg folks noted that both Kerry and Baby Bush are making use of historical comparisons, and so they asked people whether they had any idea what those historical references meant. The results raise some profound questions about the language of politics:

If you live elsewhere, you may be glad to know that here in Pennsylvania we get to see, several times a day, a well-made political advertisement that in stark and clear terms connects John Kerry with Pennsylvania's long-time U.S. Senator Arlen Specter.

"Fact is, nearly 70% of the time, Specter and Kerry voted the same way," the narrator tells us, listing specific issues on which they agree like tort reform, school choice, and taxes.

Two Philadelphia newspaper stories this week illuminated a particularly frank form of taxpayers' funding elite and exclusive private schools.  

I am not talking about your basic forms of taxpayer subsidy--allowing donations to be tax deductible, or giving Title I or other grants to schools that serve "at risk" or "special needs" children.

I am talking about straight-up handing money to expensive private schools, at a time when public schools in Philly and elsewhere are struggling to make ends meet...