That must be the astonished reaction over at Bush-Cheney re-elect headquarters, as they scan the results of the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.
DR predicted that bounce would disappear pretty quickly, but this is faster than even he anticipated. Check out these approval figures.
Bush’s overall approval rating in this poll is down to 50 percent which is lower than he was before Saddam’s capture (52 percent)–in fact, matching the lowest figure recorded for Bush during his presidency.
His approval rating on the economy, which went up from a net -7 (44 percent approval/51 percent disapproval) to a net +6 (49 percent approval/43 percent disapproval) practically overnight with Saddam’s capture has now returned to exactly where it was before: 44/51. His approval rating on Iraq, which skied from 45 percent to 59 percent with Saddam’s capture has now dropped back to 48 percent. Similarly, his approval rating on foreign policy, which had bounced from 45 percent to 52 percent, is now back down to 47 percent.
More on this and other new polls tomorrow.
Note: DR is happy to report that the technical problem mentioned in the previous post has been fixed. Feel free to click away on anything that interests you on the right-hand nav bar.
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 19: Will Chaos of Chicago ’68 Return This Year?
A lot of people who weren’t alive to witness the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago are wondering if it’s legendary chaos. I evaluated that possibility at New York:
When the Democratic National Committee chose Chicago as the site of the party’s 2024 national convention a year ago, no one knew incumbent presidential nominee Joe Biden would become the target of major antiwar demonstrations. The fateful events of October 7 were nearly six months away, and Biden had yet to formally announce his candidacy for reelection. So there was no reason to anticipate comparisons to the riotous 1968 Democratic Convention, when images of police clashing with anti–Vietnam War protesters in the Windy City were broadcast into millions of homes. Indeed, a year ago, a more likely analog to 2024 might have been the last Democratic convention in Chicago in 1996; that event was an upbeat vehicle for Bill Clinton’s successful reelection campaign.
Instead, thanks to intense controversy over Israel’s lethal operations in Gaza and widespread global protests aimed partly at Israel’s allies and sponsors in Washington, plans are well underway for demonstrations in Chicago during the August 19 to 22 confab. Organizers say they expect as many as 30,000 protesters to gather outside Chicago’s United Center during the convention. As in the past, a key issue is how close the protests get to the actual convention. Obviously, demonstrators want delegates to hear their voices and the media to amplify their message. And police, Chicago officials, and Democratic Party leaders want protests to occur as far away from the convention as possible. How well these divergent interests are met will determine whether there is anything like the kind of clashes that dominated Chicago ’68.
There are, however, some big differences in the context surrounding the two conventions. Here’s why the odds of a 2024 convention showdown rivaling 1968 are actually fairly low.
Gaza isn’t Vietnam.
Horrific as the ongoing events in Gaza undoubtedly are, and with all due consideration of the U.S. role in backing and supplying Israel now and in the past, the Vietnam War was a more viscerally immediate crisis for both the protesters who descended on Chicago that summer and the Americans watching the spectacle on TV. There were over a half-million American troops deployed in Vietnam in 1968, and nearly 300,000 young men were drafted into the Army and Marines that year. Many of the protesters at the convention were protesting their own or family members’ future personal involvement in the war, or an escape overseas beyond the Selective Service System’s reach (an estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, and how to deal with them upon repatriation became a major political issue for years).
Even from a purely humanitarian and altruistic point of view, Vietnamese military and civilian casualties ran into the millions during the period of U.S. involvement. It wasn’t common to call what was happening “genocide,” but there’s no question the images emanating from the war (which spilled over catastrophically into Laos and especially Cambodia) were deeply disturbing to the consciences of vast numbers of Americans.
Perhaps a better analogy for the Gaza protests than those of the Vietnam era might be the extensive protests during the late 1970s and 1980s over apartheid in South Africa (a regime that enjoyed explicit and implicit backing from multiple U.S. administrations) and in favor of a freeze in development and deployment of nuclear weapons. These were significant protest movements, but still paled next to the organized opposition to the Vietnam War.
Political conventions are different today.
One reason the 1968 Chicago protests created such an indelible image is that the conflict outside on the streets was reflected in conflict inside the convention venue. For one thing, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey had not quelled formal opposition to his selection when the convention opened. He never entered or won a single primary. One opponent who did, Eugene McCarthy, was still battling for the nomination in Chicago. Another, Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated two months earlier (1972 presidential nominee George McGovern was the caretaker for Kennedy delegates at the 1968 convention). There was a highly emotional platform fight over Vietnam policy during the convention itself; when a “peace plank” was defeated, New York delegates led protesters singing “We Shall Overcome.” Once violence broke out on the streets, it did not pass notice among the delegates, some of whom had been attacked by police trying to enter the hall. At one point, police actually accosted and removed a TV reporter from the convention for some alleged breach in decorum.
By contrast, no matter what is going on outside the United Center, the 2024 Democratic convention is going to be totally wired for Joe Biden, with nearly all the delegates attending pledged to him and chosen by his campaign. Even aside from the lack of formal opposition to Biden, conventions since 1968 have become progressively less spontaneous and more controlled by the nominee and the party that nominee directs (indeed, the chaos in Chicago in 1968 encouraged that trend, along with near-universal use of primaries to award delegates, making conventions vastly less deliberative). While there may be some internal conflict on the platform language related to Gaza, it will very definitely be resolved long before the convention and far away from cameras.
Another significant difference between then and now is that convention delegates and Democratic elected officials generally will enter the convention acutely concerned about giving aid and comfort to the Republican nominee, the much-hated, much-feared Donald Trump. Yes, many Democrats hated and feared Richard Nixon in 1968, but Democrats were just separated by four years from a massive presidential landslide and mostly did not reckon how much Nixon would be able to straddle the Vietnam issue and benefit from Democratic divisions. That’s unlikely to be the case in August of 2024.
Brandon Johnson isn’t Richard Daley.
Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley was a major figure in the 1968 explosion in his city. He championed and defended his police department’s confrontational tactics during the convention. At one point, when Senator Abraham Ribicoff referred from the podium to “gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago,” Daley leaped up and shouted at him with cameras trained on his furious face as he clearly repeated an obscene and antisemitic response to the Jewish politician from Connecticut. Beyond his conduct on that occasion, “Boss” Daley was the epitome of the old-school Irish American machine politician and from a different planet culturally than the protesters at the convention.
Current Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who was born the year of Daley’s death, is a Black progressive and labor activist who is still fresh from his narrow 2023 mayoral runoff victory over the candidate backed by both the Democratic Establishment and police unions. While he is surely wary of the damage anti-Israel and anti-Biden protests can do to the city’s image if they turn violent, Johnson is not without ties to protesters. He broke a tie in the Chicago City Council to ensure passage of a Gaza cease-fire resolution earlier this year. His negotiating skills will be tested by the maneuvering already underway with protest groups and the Democratic Party, but he’s not going to be the sort of implacable foe the 1968 protesters encountered.
The whole world (probably) won’t be watching.
The 1968 Democratic convention was from a bygone era of gavel-to-gavel coverage by the three broadcast-television networks that then dominated the media landscape and the living rooms of the country. When they were being bludgeoned by the Chicago police, protesters began chanting, “The whole world is watching,” which wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Today’s media coverage of major-party political conventions is extremely limited and (like coverage of other events) fragmented. If violence breaks out this time in Chicago, it will get a lot of attention, albeit much of it bent to the optics of the various media outlets covering it. But the sense in 1968 that the whole nation was watching in horror as an unprecedented event rolled out in real time will likely never be recovered.
An astonished reaction from the Bush-Cheney team? Probably not. Unlike the Washington press corps, I credit these guys with having a brain in their head. No doubt they’re busy trying to estimate the magnitude of the spike to be generated by the Saddam Trial, and trying to figure out if they can time it to coincide with November. If not, an invasion of Syria might do the trick.
I’m wondering whether the CBS/NTY poll might be the start of the first anti-spike in the Bush presidency, brought on by angry conservatives protesting the immigration reform and trip to Mars. Time will tell.
What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Um . . . Teddie gave a nice speech the other day. You get a pat on the head, Ted!
But seriously, it sends me into the slough of despond to watch our media. I never used to be one of those conspiracy-theorist types, ranting about the “corporate media, bought and paid for,” but lately . . . you’ve just gotta wonder.
In addition to the media’s shameful performance, there’s our leading Democrats, who really did, as Dean claims, roll over for Bush on the war. They only began to make an issue of the deception after Dean started gaining traction with his anti-Iraq war message, and even then they’re in a tricky spot: they all still justify their votes, when they manifestly should have known better. Only a few Dems (Fritz Hollings comes to mind) have said flat-out, I voted for the war and I shouldn’t have because I was duped. Would that Kerry just ‘fess up.
What about the Weapons of Mass Destruction? Even those shells found by the Danes lask week and paraded as having residue of blister gas have proven negative for chemicals. Where is the backlash? Where’s the scandal? Where’s the public outcry?
Are there going to be hearings on this or what? What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Pessimism confirmed! I see that the CBS News Web site headlined this poll “Bush’s Approval Sinking,” but the NYT (much more important) had the more equivocal and therefore “objectively pro-Bush” (ha ha) “Poll Bolsters Bush on Terrorism but Finds Doubts on Economy.”
Neither the article nor the headline are really out of line (like USAT’s puff piece), because the numbers ARE equivocal. Still, the news about Bush’s approval sinking doesn’t show up until paragraph three. Buried further in the data or the graphs are two other numbers that are very negative for Bush: his historically high disapproval rating (45 percent) and the re-elect matchups showing a negative two percent against an unnnamed Dem.
The Pessimist here: But how will the press play all this? I see that NYT headlined it properly (Bush Support Sinking), but will the rest of the media follow suit? I mean, let’s not forget that Ruy pointed out USAT’s astonishginly dishonest headline and story from their poll last week: something like Bush Approval Soaring, but you had to go to their Web site and look at the raw data to find out that his approval had actually sunk 3 points.
And let’s not forget Time magazine’s wonderful cover story on Dean last week, the one about all the doubts about his electability, the one that didn’t bother to inform readers until the third-to-last paragraph that their own poll showed Dean only six points behind Bush, and running ahead of the rest of the Dem pack in one-to-one matchups.
I pretty much agree with Scout.
The thing people are learning about the Bush administration is that the good news, be it about the economy or Iraq or whatever, never stays good, whence the smaller and smaller bounces. You can be spun only so many times before you stop placing any credit in it. Bush is very close to quota with most Americans.
The Chopped Down Christmas Tree continues…
Since 9/11, Bush has had huge peaks followed by slow declines. Each one, however, peaks smaller and declines faster than the last; we may have seen the absolute last “branch” of the tree, if you will, with the Saddam Capture, and I think the Mars Initiative was an attempt to get more “bounce”. But there wasn’t, and this is a good sign. In an election year, domestic ideas are key, and Bush doesn’t have any- and with the deficit looking like it is, I think people might actually get sick of hearing “taxcuttaxcuttaxcut” as a sound domestic policy.
Great blog, by the way.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.