The just-released Pew poll is singing the same song as the Gallup poll I discussed yesterday. Kerry leads Bush by 5 points among RVs (50-45), which includes leads of 7 points among independents, 14 points among seniors and 22 points among 18-29 year olds. And Bush’s approval rating is down to 44 percent with 48 percent disapproval (40/49 among independents).
The Pew poll also has satisfaction with the direction of the country down to 33 percent, with 61 percent dissatisfied. In early January, the same indicator was at 45/48.
And Kerry, as in the Gallup poll, is faring better in match-ups with Bush on who can do the best job on various issues. Kerry is now leading by 22 on improving the health care system (up from 13); by 15 on improving the job situation (up from 8); by 15 on improving education (up from 4); and by 10 on improving economic conditions (up from 5). He has also mostly eliminated Bush’s leads on making wise decisions about foreign policy (now 1 point, down from 6 previously) and, critically, about what to do in Iraq (now 3 points, down from 12 before).
Looks like all those pundits who thought Bush was escaping unscathed from the recent torrent of bad news were calling it early–way early.

The latest Gallup poll has Kerry leading Bush by 6 points among RVs (50-44), up from dead-even 5 days before. (47-47). (Oddly, Gallup’s LV match-up has Kerry slipping to 47-48 from a 49-48 lead 5 days ago. But, as I have repeatedly argued, it is the RV match-ups, not the LV match-ups, that best reflect the state of the race this early in the campaign. This absurd result from Gallup is one more reason to ignore the silly LV data whereever possible.)
That should make a lot horse race obsessives out there happy. But other findings from the poll are probably more important. Like this one: Bush’s approval rating is down to 46 percent with 51 percent disapproval. That’s a net negative rating of -5. At the beginning of the year, Bush’s rating in the Gallup poll was 59/38, for a net positive rating of +21. Quite a shift.
Bush’s approval rating on the economy is unchanged at an abysmal 41/56, while his rating on terrorism actually went up slightly to 54/43 from 52/45. But his rating on handling the situation in Iraq has continued its downward trajectory, sinking to 41/58 from 42/55.
The poll also shows Kerry doing much better in comparisons with Bush on handling three key issues: the economy, the situation in Iraq and terrorism. On terrorism, while Kerry remains solidly behind Bush by 17 points (55-38), that’s a significant contraction from Bush’s 60-33, 27 point lead two months ago. On the economy, Kerry has widened his 50-42 lead two months ago to a 54-40 edge today. And on Iraq–very significant in my view–Kerry has mostly eliminated Bush’s 15 point lead from March to a mere 3 points today (48-45).
As for whether “it was worth going to war in Iraq or not”, the public now says it wasn’t worth it by 54-44. Note that this is the first time Gallup has received a negative response to this question. Indeed, just five days ago, it was still 50-47 in favor of the war being worth it.
In addition, there is now close to an even split on whether the US should withdraw at least some troops from Iraq. A total of 47 percent says we should either withdraw all troops (29 percent) or some troops (18 percent), compared to 49 percent who want to either send more troops (25 percent) or keep troop levels as they are (24 percent). And close to half (45 percent) now say they’d be upset if Bush sent more troops to Iraq, up from 38 percent two months ago.
Bush is running out of options. And, as Bush is sinking, Kerry is cranking up his campaign. Stay tuned.

In the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll , only 33 percent of voters say the country is going in the right direction, compared to 50 percent who say it is off on the wrong track. 33 percent! And it’s only 25 percent among independents.
That kind of negative sentiment can’t be explained simply on the basis of the economic pessimism I discussed in the last couple of posts or of other domestic problems, grave as they may be. Voter pessimism about the direction of the country is also tied to the sense our foreign policy in general, and Iraq policy in particular, are in a shambles.
In the NBC News poll, Bush’s job rating on foreign policy is down to 43 percent approval/51 percent disapproval, his worst rating ever in that poll. And in the latest Ipsos-AP poll, his rating on handling foreign policy and terrorism (my emphasis) is down to just 50 percent. (Forties, here we come!)
The reasons for these low ratings are not too hard to find, as the public ponders the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the growing power of extremist Shiite leader, Moqtada Sadr, escalating US casualties and the complete lack of a plausible exit strategy. They have come to the conclusion that the situation is out of control–quite literally. By 60-34, voters say the US is not in control of the situation in Iraq.
They also say, by 64-19, that the Iraqi people will not be ready to take over and run their country by June 30 and, by 51-27. that Iraq will not be able to establish and maintain a stable, democratic government. The latter finding reverses a March reading on the same question where, by 46-40, voters thought Iraqis would be able to maintain a stable, democratic government.
Finally, voters today think removing Saddam Hussein from power was not worth the number of US military casualties and associated financial costs (47-42). That’s another change from two months ago when voters thought removing Saddam was worth the casualties and costs by 50-44.
So voters are deeply pessimistic about what’s going on in Iraq and are increasingly convinced the war hasn’t been worth the effort and lives we have put into it. In fact, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 60 percent of Americans are now willing to say we’ve “gotten bogged down in Iraq”. Shades of Vietnam! And, as was the case with Vietnam, it sounds like the public is losing interest in staying the course and becoming oriented instead toward how the country can extricate itself from this particular quagmire.
But how to do this? Kerry has offered an alternative approach to that of the Bush administration. And the Center for American Progress (CAP) has offered a plan that is consistent with much of what Kerry (and other Democrats) have said, but provides more detail and specifics on how a more sensible strategy for Iraq might be conducted. I find myself in agreement with much of what CAP has to say.
However, both Kerry and CAP (and the school of thought they represent) seem short in the exit strategy department. I think the public increasingly wants to know: “How do we get out of Iraq?”. Neither Kerry nor CAP addresses this question head-on.
In the end, as public opinion continues to shift, that may not be a viable approach. Michelle Goldberg in Salon has a good article today on “Time to Get Out?“, that raises the issue directly and outlines the debate that is starting to emerge around it. In the article, she summarizes pollster John Zogby’s position as “Kerry should start talking about exit strategy….he should offer voters the prospect of ending the war, even if that prospect remains vague”.
He may be on to something.

On Friday, I pointed out that the good jobs report for April seemed unlikely to turn voters’ negative views of Bush’s economic management around. Here’s some more evidence supporting that judgement.
First, note that both the new ARG poll and the new AP poll have Bush’s approval rating on the economy down to the lowest levels recorded by these polls (38 percent and 43 percent, respectively). Guess voters haven’t yet absorbed the good news about how the economy is “strong and getting stronger” and about how “tax relief is working”.
And here’s a result from the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that crisply captures voters’ current economic pessimism and the difficulties Bush is going to have turning that pessimism around. By 2:1 (60/31) voters agree that “On the basis of what I see for the future, the signs point to an economy that is going to be in trouble–jobs are moving overseas, the budget deficit is growing, and too many jobs do not have health insurance or pensions.”, rather than “On the basis of what I see for the future, the signs point to an economy that is going to be strong–jobs are being created, inflation is low, and the stock market is up”.
Clearly, voters’ economic pessimism is deeply-rooted in a wide range of economic problems that have uniformly gotten worse on Bush’s watch. And it’s not likely to go away because we’ve finally got some good monthly job numbers. In the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, he’s still “got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do”.

Greeted with the usual histrionics by the press (exceeds expectations! second straight month of strong growth!), today’s jobs report indicates that 288,000 jobs were added to the economy in April. Is the economy about to bail Bush out politically?
Not likely. First, let’s put these numbers in perspective. Adding 288,000 jobs, while excellent by recent standards, actually remains below the administration’s own job growth projections of 306,000/month, made by the CEA when the 2003 tax cuts were passed one year ago. So far they’ve only hit that figure in one month (last month) and they continue to be well on track for an extraordinary negative job growth record over the course of Bush’s administration. In addition, recent job growth has, so far, failed to alter the stagnation in wage and salary growth that currently afflicts the labor market. (For more detail on all this, see the Economic Policy Institute’s excellent Job Watch site.)
Second, let’s look at the numbers from the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted May 1-3–that is, right after the month when the 288,000 jobs were added. Key findings from the poll are well-summarized by the Journal‘s John Harwood:
[Poll] results reflect a mood closer to the unsuccessful 1992 re-election campaign of the current president’s father than to prevailing sentiment during Bill Clinton’s successful bid for a second term in 1996. Only 42% say they are better off than four years ago, compared with 33% who say they are worse off and 23% reporting “about the same.” Pluralities of political independents, swing voters and senior citizens say they have become worse off under Mr. Bush.
Voters remain skeptical [about the economy]. Disapproval of Mr. Bush’s handling of the economy, 53% to 41%, represents the weakest showing of his presidency. After months of high-profile discussion of job losses, the proportion of Americans who expect better times in the next year has fallen to 42% from 50% in January. By 51% to 40% voters say Mr. Bush’s tax cuts were too large, while a 63% majority shrugs off recent stock-market gains as benefiting “only businesses and investors,” not “nearly all Americans.”
The problem for the administration is that voters respond mostly to the economic situation on the ground, not “good” economic statistics. Economic growth in 1992, for example, was pretty good–close to what we are experiencing this year–but that didn’t help Bush’s father much.
Another example, less widely-known, is 1994 and its comparison to 1996. 1994 was actually quite a a good year not just for economic growth, but also for job growth–better, in fact, than 2004 is likely to be. In March of 1994, the economy added 468,000 jobs and in April, 357,000 jobs; about 3.9 million jobs were added over the year as a whole. But wage decline and income stagnation continued during that year, economic pessimism failed to lift and, as a result, the incumbent Democrats never got the lift from the economy’s performance that they thought they would.
In contrast, in 1996, not only were overall economic and job growth good, but the labor market was also delivering strong wage and income growth. As a result, economic optimism soared, starting in the spring of that year, helping Clinton to an easy re-election victory.
All this suggests that Bush will continue to be in trouble on the economy until and unless it starts performing like the mid-90’s Clinton economy. And don’t hold your breath on that one.

Yesterday, I was arguing that this race is a referendum on the incumbent and Kerry backers should take heart from how poorly–and increasingly so–Bush is doing in the eyes of voters. The release of the latest Gallup poll, provides abundant support for that viewpoint.
There’s even some good news on the horse race numbers people have been obsessing about. Kerry is now tied with Bush in Gallup’s RV matchup (47-47), an improvement from his 46-50 performance in their mid-April poll. The same pattern can be seen in Gallup’s LV version of this matchup, with Kerry ahead 49-48, compared to lagging 46-51 in mid-April.
Note also that, continuing a pattern I’ve noted of late, Kerry is doing better in the battleground states than overall. In an LV Kerry-Bush-Nader matchup (the only relevant data Gallup provides), Kerry is ahead of Bush by 4 points (48-44) in the “purple states”, while tied in the national race.
But the really cool stuff here is how dreadfully Bush is doing in every area Gallup asked about. In terms of whether people are satisfied or dissatisfied with way things in the country are going, 36 percent say satisfied and 62 percent say dissatisfied–the worst rating of his presidency.
Bush’s overall approval rating is now 49 percent approve/48 percent disapprove, tied for the worst of his presidency. And here are his approval ratings in four specific areas, all the worst of his presidency: the economy, 41 approve/56 disapprove; foreign affairs, 42/53; the situation in Iraq, 42/55; and terrorism, 52/45 (!).
Hope that cheers everybody up.

Tim Grieve has a useful article on Salon.com today on Democrats’ “Premature Panic“. He has a nice lead that should make help Democrats take a deep breath and calm down a bit:
With just months to go in an election that ought to be a referendum on President Bush, the New York Times runs a front-page story: The Democrats are in serious trouble. Although Bush’s approval ratings are low, the presumptive Democratic nominee can’t get any traction. His campaign “continues to confront a cloud of doubts and reservations,” the Times says, and voters are complaining that he hasn’t offered the country a clear vision for the future.
It may sound like the Times on John Kerry in 2004. In fact, it’s the Times on Bill Clinton in 1992.
Grieve goes on to point out:
The Times [in 1992] said then that unnamed “political professionals in the Democratic Party” were troubled that Clinton hadn’t made a better impression on the nation’s voters. [Adam] Nagourney’s piece Sunday reported that “Democratic Party officials” have similar worries about Kerry.
But there’s a key difference here: In April 1992, the New York Times/CBS News poll showed Clinton trailing President George H.W. Bush, 49 percent to 40 percent, among registered voters. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows Kerry and President George W. Bush in a statistical dead heat.
Yes, yes, 2004 is not 1992, there was the Perot factor and so on. But food for thought, no? Perhaps we’re not as bad off as many Democrats seem determined to believe.
Democrats would get less hysterical, I think, if they firmly kept in mind one fundamental truth abut this election: it’s a referendum on the incumbent, as Chuck Todd reminds us, not John Kerry. So they key thing at this state of the campaign is how voters feel about the incumbent. If it’s negative, then Kerry is likely to win if he can convince voters he’s an acceptable alternative. But that is a process that will take some time, since voters who are thinking of abandoning the incumbent for his opponent are unlikely to do so all at once. Instead, that change is likely to happen in increments as Kerry makes his case and voters get to know him better. In short, the sudden 10 point leads that some Democrats appear to be looking for are unlikely and their current absence is no cause for panic or even much serious worry.
Rather than rending their garments about how close the horse race currently is, Democrats should be taking heart from the continued growth of negative feelings about Bush. The latest Quinniapiac University poll has Bush’s approval rating down to 46 percent approve/47 percent disapprove–their first net negative rating for Bush and well into the incumbent danger zone. The also have Bush’s approval rating on the economy at 41 approve/52 disapprove, on Iraq at 42/51 and even his rating on handling terrorism at just 54 percent.
Voters just don’t think Bush is doing a good job. And that’s great for Kerry. So, relax, take a deep breath and try to stay calm. The fundamentals of the race are very promising. And the last thing Kerry needs is for Democrats to go wobbly on him just because he doesn’t already have a big lead.

Chuck Todd, editor of The Hotline, has an intriguing article in the new issue of The Washington Monthly that makes the case Kerry could indeed win in a landslide. In fact, he argues that, if Kerry wins, it is much more likely to be by a landslide than in a close election.
His reason for believing this is very simple: “Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent–and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins.” He goes on to say: “If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls–such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November–it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it’s going to be Kerry in a rout.”
I like the sound of that. (Clearly the man’s a genius!) And here’s Todd’s take on the electoral fate of recent incumbent presidents, with a particular focus on Jimmy Carter and the interesting parallels between his presidency and Bush’s:
In the last 25 years, there have been four elections which pitted an incumbent against a challenger–1980, 1984, 1992, and 1996. In all four, the victor won by a substantial margin in the electoral college. The circumstances of one election hold particular relevance for today: 1980. That year, the country was weathering both tough economic times (the era of “stagflation”–high inflation concurrent with a recession) and frightening foreign policy crises (the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). Indeed, this year Bush is looking unexpectedly like Carter. Though the two presidents differ substantially in personal style (one indecisive and immersed in details, the other resolute but disengaged), they are also curiously similar. Both are religious former Southern governors. Both initially won the presidency by tarring their opponents (Gerald Ford, Al Gore) with the shortcomings of their predecessors (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton). Like Carter, Bush is vulnerable to being attacked as someone not up to the job of managing impending global crises.
Everyone expected the 1980 election to be very close. In fact, Reagan won with 50.8 percent of the popular vote to Carter’s 41 percent (independent John Anderson won 6.6 percent)–which translated into an electoral avalanche of 489 to 49. The race was decided not so much on the public’s nascent impressions of the challenger, but on their dissatisfaction with the incumbent.
Todd may or may not be right about all this. But he makes a clear case for his viewpoint and it’s well worth considering.

Here is the beginning of an article I just published in The American Prospect‘s excellent special report on “Bush’s War on the Middle Class”. You can read the entire article here and access other articles from the special report here.
It’s getting harder and harder to be middle class. As a result of the Bush administration’s relentless tax-cutting agenda — designed to limit the ability of government to deliver services — the lives of middle-class Americans are becoming more difficult and less secure, in areas from health care to pensions to public schools. But, in the immortal words of Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage?” Why have these attacks not provoked a greater political reaction? And what chance is there for a progressive middle-class response to these attacks in the future?
This lack of outrage seems particularly odd because the middle class is aware of the attacks upon it. People in general, and the middle class in particular, believe that Bush-administration policies have favored the interests of large corporations and the rich over those of ordinary people and the middle class. An early January CBS News poll found that, by huge margins, the public thought that Bush administration policies favor the rich (57 percent) rather than the middle class (11 percent), the poor (1 percent), or all groups the same (25 percent). By a nearly 2-to-1 margin (58 percent to 30 percent), the public said that George W. Bush is more interested in protecting the interests of large corporations than those of ordinary Americans. And by almost 3 to 1 (64 percent to 23 percent), the public thought big business has too much influence, rather than the right amount, on the Bush administration.
Research repeatedly shows that middle-class views track those of the general public very closely, both because of the middle class’ large size and its political positioning (between the poor and the rich). But we don’t have to merely assume that the middle class shares these jaundiced views of the Bush administration’s policy bias. Where available, data for middle-class subgroups within surveys confirm this. In an April 2003 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 57 percent overall said that Bush’s proposals on cutting taxes favored the rich, while 11 percent said that they favored the middle class. These figures are almost exactly the average of the two income breaks that best capture the middle class ($30,000 to $50,000 and $50,000 to $75,000). In the same poll, 61 percent thought that large business corporations had too much influence on the Bush administration, compared with just 8 percent who thought that they had too little — again, almost exactly the average of the two middle-class income brackets. And in a March 2004 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 67 percent overall thought that Bush cared more about protecting the interests of large business corporations, compared with 26 percent who thought that he cared more about protecting the interests of ordinary working people — almost exactly the result for the middling education category of “some college.”
Is it possible, though, that the middle class recognizes that the Bush plan doesn’t serve it well but still believes, on balance, that the policy’s relative priorities are the right ones? That is most emphatically not the case, either. The middle class consistently and overwhelmingly rejects the prioritizing of tax cuts over social investment. In the April 2003 ABC News poll, the two middle-class income brackets averaged 70-percent support for spending more on domestic programs — like education, health care, and Social Security — and 28-percent support for cutting taxes. These respondents also said, by 64 percent to 27 percent, that cutting taxes is more important to Bush than providing services, while, by 68 percent to 30 percent, they said that providing services is more important for them personally than cutting taxes. Indeed, no matter how the general trade-off between tax cuts and social investment is framed, middle-class priorities seem consistently skewed toward investment and away from tax cuts.

We can now safely disregard the theory that bad news somehow doesn’t hurt Bush politically. He may be able to delay or slightly mitigate that harm but, as common sense would suggest, he cannot escape it.
Consider the results of the just-released CBS News/New York Times poll, conducted April 23-27. Bush’s approval rating is down to 46 percent approve/47 percent disapprove (40/47 among independents), the lowest of his presidency and the first net negative rating in this poll. Bush’s approval rating on foreign policy is now 40/51 (36/52 among independents), also the lowest of his presidency, as is his rating on Iraq at 41/52 (independents: 37/53). And his rating on the economy remains below 40 at 39/54 (36/57 among independents).
Those are some mighty bad numbers. Only his rating on “handling the campaign against terrorism” remains fairly strong at 60/34, but even here that is is the second lowest of his presidency.
As for right direction/wrong track, his performance is even more dismal in this poll than in the Democracy Corps poll discussed yesterday. Only 36 percent say the country is going in the right direction, compared to 55 percent who say it’s gotten seriously off on the wrong track (and that’s 30/59–almost 2:1 wrong track!–among independents).
The poll also indicates that Kerry now has a small 2 point lead among RVs in the head-to-head horse race (46-44). So much for Bush’s mid-April mini-surge. And Kerry’s ahead by 4 points among independents.
Speaking of the direction things are going, I didn’t get a chance to cite these results from the DCorps poll yesterday, but they’re worth considering. DCorps asked about a wide range of issues and whether the country should continue in Bush’s direction or go in a significantly different direction. Except for the war on terrorism, where voters favor the Bush direction, voters favor a significantly different direction than Bush’s in every area: the federal budget; health care; jobs; prescription drug coverage for seniors; the economy; middle class living standards; taxes; foreign policy; Iraq; and education. Apparently there are a lot of time-for-a-change voters out there.
But the worst news for Bush is the extent to which public support for the Iraq war is declining. How about the key question of whether the war a mistake or not, an indicator I’ve discussed several times lately? In the CBS News poll, the public says yes, 48-46 (49-44 among independents). Last April, sentiment was overwhelming (70-24) that the war was not a mistake.
On a closely-related question, whether the US “did the right thing” in taking military action against Iraq or should have stayed out, the public is now almost evenly-split (47 right thing/46 stayed out; independents are 44/47). Just four months ago, it was 64 right thing/28 stayed out.
On whether the result of the war was worth the loss of life and other costs, the public now believes, by 25 points, that the result wasn’t worth the cost (58-33; 61-31 among independents). And on whether Iraq was a threat that required immediate military action, we are now down to only one-third who believe that immediate action was necessary, compared to about two-thirds who believe the Iraq threat either could have been contained or was not a threat at all. No wonder people now believe, by 61-34, that the Bush administration was too quick to get American military forces involved, rather than that the administration tried hard enough to reach a diplomatic solution.
Next they’ll be saying the Bush administration didn’t make the decision to invade Iraq when they said they did–in March, 2003–but rather before that. In fact, that’s exactly what they say, by 68-23, even when explicitly informed that the Bush administration claims they made that decision in March. In other words, the public overwhelmingly believes they’re lying about that.
Ah, but the public doesn’t really care, right, because they are convinced the Bush administration has made them safer. Not really. Less than half (49 percent) now believe Bush administration policies have made then safer from terrorism, compared to 46 percent who believe either these policies have made them less safe (25 percent) or had no effect (21 percent). Among independents, it’s actually a majority sentiment (51-44) that Bush administration policies have not made the US safer from terrorism. And note this: in mid-January of this year, the public believed overwhelmingly, by 68-29, that Bush administration policies were making them safer. There’s something going on here and it’s all bad for Bush and his re-election bid.
And if people are now unsure whether Bush administration policies overall have actually made them safer from terrorism, they are very clear that the war in Iraq has not had that effect. By 4:1 (80/18), the public believes the Iraq war has either increased the threat of terrorism or kept it about the same, rather than decreased that threat.
What does the public want to do now about Iraq? They’re not quite sure. While four months ago they believed by 21 points (56-35) that the US should stay in Iraq as long as necessary to establish a stable democracy, rather than leave as soon as possible, now they are split right down the middle on this (46-46).
Iraq may not be “another Vietnam”, in substantive terms. But sentiment about Iraq is starting to look more and more like sentiment about Vietnam. And if you’re running for re-election, that ain’t good.