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 26: Kennedy Now Taking As Many Votes From Trump As From Biden
Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:
For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, he’s getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.
Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trump’s attention. And it has, NBC News reports:
“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’s confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him — a net win for the Republican’s candidacy.
“’He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’
“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”
Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And it’s generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trump’s support than on Biden’s; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:
“’If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.’”
One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So it’s in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former president’s sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: “Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedy’s views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more ‘radical Left’ than Mr. Biden.”
The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.
If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if you’re Trump) or too far right (if you’re Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates they’d prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic — if deployed with some serious dollars — could have an effect on Kennedy’s base of support.
Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”
Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:
“Kennedy’s campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan — Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.
“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet they’ll go medieval on him without even a moment’s hesitation.
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.