Alas, the absurd idea that the 2004 NEP exit poll, whose early unweighted data showed a Kerry lead, indicated widespread voter fraud in the 2004 election is still with us, promoted especially by alleged exit poll “expert”, Steven Freeman. For a useful demolition job on Freeman’s highly flawed analysis, see the recent paper by Rick Brady, posted on the website, Stones Cry Out. Some comments on Brady’s paper, as well as further disparagement of the exit polls/voter fraud thesis, may be found in this post over at Mystery Pollster.
Now can we please get back to thinking about the real issue: how to beat the folks who did, in fact, win the last election?

In the Sunday New York Times, columnist Thomas L. Friedman blasts the Bush Administration for its lack of a coherent energy policy, other than drilling for oil. For Democrats paying attention, Friedman’s broadsides reveal another Achilles heel Dems can target leading up to the ’06 and ’08 elections. Friedman’s column “Geo-Greening By Example” lays bare the GOP’s “who needs an energy policy?” attitude and the mounting dangers it entails for our security, our economy and the environment.

By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world…we are financing the jihadists – and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them – through our gasoline purchases…By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela…Finally, by doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are only hastening the climate change crisis, and the Bush officials who scoff at the science around this should hang their heads in shame. And it is only going to get worse the longer we do nothing.

Some of Friedman’s remedies are debatable, such as a huge hike in the gas tax, building nuclear power plants and having the President use an armor-plated Ford Escape hybrid as his “limo.” (armor plating would likely obliterate the hybrid’s mpg advantage). He supports some better ideas long-advocated by Democrats, including tax incentives for development of wind, solar and hydro power, but omits mention of the need for accelerating development of mass rail transit within and between cities.
In an earlier (January 30th) article, “The Geo-Green Alternative,” Friedman made a persuasive appeal for energy independence as the most powerful — and cost-effective — leverage we have for promoting democracy in the Middle East. John Kerry and John Edwards touched lightly on the advantages of a comprehensive energy policy during the ’04 campaign, but their efforts were not well-covered in the media or adequately promoted. Because the Republicans are wedded to the interests of the oil companies, it is highly unlikely that they will meet Friedman’s challenge to develop a credible energy policy.
With rising gas prices now identified as the number one economic problem (see March 25 post) and with 61 percent of respondents expressing support for more conservation measures in a recent Harris Poll (see March 22 post below), Friedman’s critique merits serious consideration. As the energy and environmental crises worsen, Democrats have much to gain by uniting behind a comprehensive strategy for energy independence.

In posts on Thursday and Friday, I argued that Bush’s political support, already eroding because of his unpopular Social Security plan, is suffering additional and serious damage from his handling of the Schiavo case and from growing public disenchantment with the economy.
Abundant evidence for that view is provided by new polls from Gallup and the Pew Research Center. In the new Gallup poll, Bush’s approval rating is down to 45 percent–that in a poll that typically runs high on Bush approval relative to other public polls. The Gallup report on the poll points out:

This is the lowest such rating Bush has received since taking office….
In the last three Gallup surveys, conducted in late February and early March, Bush’s job approval rating was 52%. The timing of the seven-point drop suggests that the controversy over the Terri Schiavo case may be a major cause. New polls by ABC and CBS News show large majorities of Americans opposed to the intervention by Congress and the president in the Schiavo case, and Gallup’s Tuesday-night poll shows a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Bush has handled the Schiavo situation. Almost all recent polling has shown that Americans approve of the decision to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube.
But the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey suggests that the public’s increasingly dismal views about the economy, and about the way things are going in general, could also be factors in Bush’s lower approval rating.

The report goes on to detail those “dismal” views about the economy:

Gallup’s economic measures also show a continual decline since the beginning of the year. Thirty-two percent of Americans rate current economic conditions as excellent or good, while 24% say poor. That eight-point positive margin is the smallest since Gallup found a two-point margin last May. At the beginning of this year, 41% rated the economy as excellent or good, while just 17% said poor — a 24-point positive margin. Earlier this month, the positive margin was 19 points, 35% to 16%.
Even more dramatic is the greater pessimism about the future of the nation’s economy. Fifty-nine percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse, just 33% say better — a 26-point negative margin. Earlier this month, the net negative rating was just nine points, with 50% saying the economy was getting worse, and 41% saying better. This is the worst rating on this measure in two years.

One factor clearly contributing to the economic malaise, as the report points out, is concern about rising gas prices (see below).
The latest Pew Research Center poll also finds Bush’s approval rating at 45 percent. In addition, the poll finds support for the most basic part of Bush’s Social Security plan–private accounts funded by part of the Social Security tax–continuing to sink. A generic question about these accounts, that does not mention Bush or any possible costs or tradeoffs, now returns only a narrow 44-40 plurality, down from 58-26 last September. Moreover, support for these accounts declines substantially (to 52-41 opposition) among those who have heard the most about this idea–in other words, awareness of the private accounts idea appears to promote opposition to it. Perhaps most disheartening of all for the Bush administration, the “awareness breeds opposition” dynamic appears to be strongest among the 18-29 year old cohort they are counting on to push Social Security privatization forward–opposition to private accounts is 26 points higher among 18-29 year olds who have “heard a lot” about the idea, than among those who have heard little or nothing.
And did I mention that 18-29 year olds oppose allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 54-33, according to this same poll? If Bush is counting on young voters to pull him out of his current slide, he’d better think again.

Until very recently, the American people have been remarkably unflappable about soaring gas prices. No more, according to the latest Gallup poll, conducted 3/21-23. Asked “What is the most important economic problem facing the country today?,” 17 percent of respondents put “fuel/oil prices” at the top of the list, ahead of such factors as unemployment, health care costs and social security and more than triple the percentage polled a month ago, when 5 percent chose gas prices as top priority.

Below, I pointed out the new CBS News poll has Bush’s economic approval at just 36 percent. A fluke? Nope; it reflects the gathering economic pessimism of the US public as month after month of the economic recovery (now well over three years old) fails to generate the robust growth people have been looking for. Instead they’re getting stagnant wages, persistent unemployment, signs of inflation and high energy prices.
Reflecting this disquiet, in a mid-March ARG poll, 46 percent said the economy was getting worse and just 27 percent said it was getting better. That compares to 39 percent better/30 worse in February. And, looking forward, 38 percent said the economy will be worse in a year, while just 30 percent said it will be better. That’s quite a bit more pessimistic than in February, when 38 percent thought the economy will be better in a year and only 25 percent said it will get worse.
Similarly, a recent Gallup report notes:

Americans have become more pessimistic about the direction of the nation’s economy. In Gallup’s initial 2005 poll, 48% of Americans said the economy was getting better and 42% said worse. A more recent poll, conducted March 7-10, finds 41% say it is getting better and 50% say it is getting worse. That represents a net shift of 15 points, from a 6-point net positive assessment (48% better, 42% worse) to a 9-point net negative assessment (41% better, 50% worse).

The report goes on to note some detailed demographics about this shift toward economic pessimism, including the fact that, of 30 groups analyzed, 27 show a shift toward economic pessimism. Even worse for the Bush administration, the biggest shifts tend to be among the very groups that provided Bush with his biggest margins last November: whites (20 point shift toward economic pessimism); residents of the south (30 points); rural residents (37 points); those with $30-75K in household income (20 points); and those with some college (25 points).
The economy’s “strong and getting stronger”? Not according to the voters Bush needs the most.

The Bush administration, with its aggressive intervention into the Terry Schiavo case, appears to have bet that it can make political gains from linking the Schiavo case to a generalized case for a “culture of life”.
So far, this attempt has been a thunderous failure.
1. In a March 20 ABC News survey, 63 percent supported the decision to Schiavo’s feeding tube while just 28 percent opposed it. Support for the decision cuts across partisan, ideological and religious lines, showing a remarkably undivided public. Democrats supported the decision 65-25, independents 63-28, Republicans 61-34, moderates 69-22, conservatives 54-40 and even conservative Republicans 55-40. Catholics supported the decision and even self-declared evangelicals narrowly supported it 46-44.
The public also solidly opposed federal intervention into the case by 60-35, with the same broad support across partisan, ideological and religious lines. And by 70-27, the public thought it was inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this case.
2. A March 18-20 Gallup poll, the public, by 56-31, agreed that removing Schiavo’s feeding tube was the right thing to do, with the same pattern of broad support seen in the ABC News poll. For example, while Democrats said removing the tube was the right thing to do by 62-26, independents agreed by 54-31 and even Republicans by 54-35. Hilariously, these exact data, which show a very small partisan spread, were displayed by CNN on its website in a classically deceptive way to imply a big partisan spread. This was done by using a truncated scale that went from a low of 53 to a high of 63. That truncated scale gave the Republicans and independents a bar height of just 1 and the Democrats a bar height of 9 that wound up towering above the Republicans and independents in the chart. Naughty, naughty, CNN!
Gallup also did a March 22 poll that found 52 percent of the public supported the federal judge’s decision not to reattach Schiavo’s feeding tube, compared to 39 percent who didn’t. The same poll found Bush will only a 32 percent approval rating, with 52 percent disapproval, on handling the Schiavo case.
3. In a March 21-22 CBS News poll, the public endorsed the decision to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube, 61-28. And, by 66-27, they said the feeding tube should not be re-attached at this point.
As for intervention into the case, they said the following: by 82-13, Congress and the president should stay out of the matter; by 75-22, federal and state governments should generally stay out of life support cases; and, by 67-31, the Supreme Court should not hear the Schiavo case. And as a kicker, the public said that Congress’ intervention into the case was to advance a political agenda (74 percent) rather than because they really care about what happens in the case.
How’s all this affecting Bush’s popularity? Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to be helping. In this poll, Bush’s overall approval rating is just 43 percent, with 48 percent disapproval. In addition, his rating on Iraq is now only 39 percent approval/53 percent disapproval and his rating on the economy is a stunningly bad 36/53, further evidence of growing public disenchantment with the economy.
And let’s not forget Congress. In the wake of their handling of the Schiavo case, Congress’ approval rating has plunged to 34/49.
In light of these data, is there any way not to read these data as a bad thing for the GOP? One way, of course, is to argue that all the pollsters’ questions are biased, an absurd contention disposed of handily by Mark Blumenthal over at Mystery Pollster (thanks, Mark!).
Another way (see Noam Scheiber) is to argue that, despite the unpopularity of Bush’s and the GOP’s stand, it serves to create a favorable contrast with the spineless, morally relativist Democrats.
I don’t buy it. Sometimes bad politics is just bad politics. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center put it in his recent op-ed, “A Political Victory That Wasn’t“, in the New York Times:

….Americans have a strong pragmatic streak. While most Americans may say they believe in creationism rather than evolution, on issues that directly affect their own lives, like health and protection of the quality of life, science wins.
Take note, for example, of the increasing support for stem-cell research. A nationwide Pew poll last August found respondents by a 52 percent to 34 percent margin saying it was more important to conduct stem-cell research that might result in new cures than to avoid destroying the potential life of embryos. Two years earlier, when this issue was first emerging, the public was more evenly divided, with 43 percent in favor and 38 percent against .
The August poll, taken during the presidential campaign, had another noteworthy lesson: the middle of the electorate, the swing voters, not only cared a lot about the stem-cell issue but also backed stem-cell research by nearly a two-to-one margin.

Thus, far from being devilishly clever on this one, Republicans are really creating another issue like stem cell research where the minority ideology of socially conservative forces within their party becomes counterposed to most Americans’ pragmatic interest in health research and control over health decisions.
In short, this is an issue that identifies Republicans with a “culture of ideology”, rather than with a culture of life. And that’s a loser every time.

In today’s New York Times, Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, sheds some welcome light on the Terri Schiavo case and the GOP’s penchant for interfering in the most sensitive and difficult decisions facing American families. Kohut’s article, “A Political Victory That Wasn’t,” makes a persuasive case that the Republicans’ meddling in the Schiavo family’s affairs demonstrates a blatant disregard for the beliefs of the American people and also shows that the Christian conservative movement may be becomming the most potent driving force of GOP political strategy. Kohut cites an ABC News Poll showing how the American people feel about the GOP-lead congressional vote allowing Terri Schiavo’s parents to take the case to federal court:

…the public, by a margin of 70 percent to 27 percent, opposes Congressional involvement in the case. Fully 67 percent of the poll’s participants thought members of Congress were more focused on using the Schiavo case for political advantage than on the principles involved.

What makes the poll’s findings even more striking, as Kohut notes, is that more than half of the poll’s respondents had been involved in making a decision concerning the termination of life support for a friend or family member. While conceding that some of the members of congress who supported the measure were acting out of conscience, he warns that the vote may signal a dangerous new trend in American politics:

…the Christian conservative movement now has the clout on life-and-death issues to do what the National Rifle Association has done for years on gun control. Strengthened by the results of the November elections, the movement can convey to legislators that the intensity of their constituents’ beliefs is more important than the balance of national public opinion.

Kohut sees the vote in congress as a test run for Christian conservatives, to see “whether they have enough standing to run against public opinion.” But Democrats can take some comfort and hope in the enduring pragmatism of American voters who may be “wary of political constraints on the tough choices their families may face…Like Social Security, end-of-life issues hit close to home, where ideology and partisanship play much less of a role than all-too-human self-interest.”

Earlier today, I attended a Brookings event on the new media and live-blogged throughout the event. Below are my comments, arranged chronologically from first to last.
10:15 AM
I’m writing this from the Brookings event on “The Impact of the New Media“. What does live-blogging add to an event like this that regular old blogging might not? Possibly nothing, but it sounded like a fun thing to do, so here I am.
10:22 AM
The question has been posed to the panel of Shafer, Cox, Allen and Ratner (Sullivan is a no-show so far), do bloggers sometimes get it wrong? The consensus seems to be that that sometimes does happen.
I’m learning a lot!
10:39 AM
The issue has been raised of whether the blogs are a reflection of political polarization or help create that polarization. Probably both. I’m still learning!
Sullivan has showed up and Dionne posed a question to him re two of his recent posts, one of which denounced conservatives for pushing federal involvement in the Schiavo, while the other suggested the need to get rid of the Medicare entitlement. Is that consistent?
Sullivan replies that one of the greatest things about blogging is that you can say exactly what you want and publish it immediately. If it doesn’t fit into pre-existing standard conservative or liberal categories, that’s just fine. On the other hand, he points out, having maverick views on certain issues that differentiate you from your generally conservative or liberal readership can hurt your level of readership and ability to raise money. So there is a price for independence.
“A blogger has to be a pariah”–Sullivan
10:50 AM
Cox: Bloggers can be more independent than mainstream media. But, in important ways, it is becoming more like mainstream media. There are feeding frenzies as in the mainstream media, there is a blogger hierarchy just as there’s a mainstream media hierarchy and, increasingly, many of the top bloggers know each other and interact with each other.
Reasonable points, based on my observations and experience.
Dionne raises the issue of bloggers being paid by political campaigns to generate buzz around candidates or to spread specific political attacks. Shafer argues the key thing is to evaluate the truth content of what is in the blogs, rather than worry too much about where some money that supports the site might be coming from. Allen points out, though, that there can be a problem when sources of money are not disclosed so that readers cannot factor that into their evaluation of content on a particular site.
Shafer pooh-poohs the idea that campaign finance laws should be brought to bear on blogs’ activities and argues that this would amount to an infringement on free speech. Sounds right. Allen’s full disclosure approach seems far preferable.
11:07 AM
Blogs and slander: Are blogs much, much better for the spread of slander than the old media? Shafer, who is emerging as a resolute defender of blogs, argues that, if there was so much exceptional slander on blogs, there would be more legal actions against them.
Sullivan characterizes blogs as more about gossip than slander. He also points out that much of the vituperation on blogs is directed against other bloggers.
Dionne raises the Martin O’Malley question. Would the mainstream media have publicized the allegations about O’Malley’s private life (leaving aside the fact that, in the short run, the poster of these allegations appears to have hurt his boss, the Maryland governor, more than O’Malley)?
Shafer points out that mainstream media publish stuff all the time that they don’t know for sure is true. So what’s the big difference? There is nothing new here in what the blogs are doing.
The issue of comments sections on blogs has been raised. The consensus seems to be that there are a lot of intelligent folks out there who do comment on blogs or send in emails to sites and that’s a good thing. I’ll buy that, though the best way to harness and display all that intelligent commentary is left unresolved.
11:22 AM
Is blogging journalism? An audience member has posed that provocative question. Speaking for myself, no, I’m an analyst not a journalist and I wouldn’t consider my blog journalism.
Cox also stoutly denies that her blog is journalism, though she does admit to occasionally commiting journalism outside the bounds of her blog. She says, however, that Josh Marshall is a journalist and much of what is in his blog could reasonably be considered journalism.
Sullivan argues that this is not an interesting question; bloggers are writing about the world and so are journalists (who are referred to by the universal term “hack” in England). The whole concept that you need special traing and adherence to these special standards to be a “journalist” is, in Sullivan’s view, baloney. Anybody who does some research and/or analysis and writes them up in an entertaining and clear way is a journalist.
There is, however, a difference between reporting and commentary and it is true that almost all blogging is commentary, not reporting. But that is a different question than whether blogging qualifies as journalism.
Color this question “unresolved”.
11:38 AM
What are blogs good for? Sullivan points out–very rightly in my view–that blogs can tap into sources of information and expertise very fast that might never see the light of day otherwise. He gives the example of trying to understand county-level developments in Florida and finding a professor who could provide him with just the information he needed which he could then immediately put on his blog.
Dionne points out that most people relate to information on the internet not through blogs but rather through conventional sites (e.g, newspaper websites). Allen adds that the readership of blogs is still quite small and that only a very small proportion of the public actually reads them (undeniably true).
Back to free speech. Shafer argues that blogs should be protected by the same regulations that protect mainstream print and broadcast journalism. And he believes they eventually will be. Anyhow, he says, all these media are bleeding into one another and becoming one big uber-media. Newsweek runs a story, it’s also featured on its website and then blogs pick up the web version and link to it, comment on it, embellish it and provide more information that was not in the original story. To censor the blogs is to censor this whole process.
11:45 AM
Final comments: So, what to make of this event? Looking over the various points I posted about above, I guess I’d have to say that nothing particularly earth-shaking was said today. The discussion was generally interesting and certainly blogs were treated very respectfully as a new member of the media universe.
Perhaps that’s the real news here: blogging has now developed a high enough profile and plays a big enough role in society that it can be the subject of a very pleasant and characteristically earnest Brookings event.
As to where blogging is going–no one here seems quite sure, other than it is likely to be more important in the future than it is now. And is blogging good or bad? It seems that most agree that it’s more good than bad, though there are obviously some places where blogs go awry. But clearly blogs can provide much important information to readers faster than the conventional media–and in the process bring many, many important voices into the media universe that would otherwise not be heard.
And that’s a very good thing whose implications we are only beginning to understand.

A new Newsweek poll confirms Bush’s generally poor and sinking approval ratings across the board.
Start with his overall approval rating of 45 percent, down 5 points since early February. Then consider his approval rating on the economy, at just 42 percent with 51 percent disapproval. And his rating on Iraq, at 41 percent with 54 percent disapproval, is his worst ever in this poll.
As usual, the sole exception to a string of dismal approval ratings in this poll is Bush’s rating on “terrorism and homeland security”. And even here, his 57 percent approval rating in this area is tied for his lowest ever in this poll.
Turning to health care, including Medicare, only 34 percent say they approve of the job Bush is doing, compared to 56 percent who say they don’t, also a low for Bush in this poll. Bush also hits new lows on the environment (41 percent approval), on energy policy (35 percent approval, with 45 percent disapproval–also his first net negative rating in this area) and on the federal budget deficit (29 percent approval with 60 percent disapproval). And his job rating on education, 46 percent, is tied for his lowest ever in that particular area.
Quite a sterling record! And we haven’t even talked about his rating on Social Security in this poll: a magnificent 33 percent, with 59 percent approval. This is the first time Newsweek has asked this item during Bush’s presidency, so there is no trend data. However, that 33 percent rating is exactly at the average of the last five public polls to release job ratings for Bush on Social Security, so it is no anomaly: the public just doesn’t like–in fact, strongly dislikes–the job he is doing on this issue.
Two recent articles shed light on why the public may not be warming up to Bush’s activities in the Social Security area: the private accounts he is proposing make them nervous for some very good reasons. One is that, as discussed in a Saturday Washington Post article, the returns on these private accounts will probably not be nearly as good as the White House says they will be. Here’s the basic analysis, as summarized in the article (the full paper referred to below, by Yale economist Robert Shiller, can be found here):

Under the Bush plan, workers ultimately would be able to invest 4 percent of their income subject to Social Security taxes in their choice of stock and bond funds. At age 47, workers who had chosen private accounts would automatically be shifted to a life-cycle portfolio, unless they and their spouse specifically opt out with a waiver acknowledging awareness of higher risk.
When workers with private accounts retire, the Bush system would subtract from their traditional Social Security benefit all of the money deposited in the private account, plus 3 percent interest above inflation. That “offset” or “claw-back” equals the amount the White House assumes those deposits would have earned in Treasury bonds had they gone into the Social Security system.
But the 3 percent hurdle appears too high for many to clear, Shiller found, especially with the conservative strategy the administration has embraced. According to U.S. historical rates of return, the life-cycle portfolio fell short of the 3 percent threshold 32 percent of the time, meaning nearly a third of personal account holders would have been better off sticking with the traditional Social Security system.
The median rate of return was 3.4 percent, barely better than the traditional system. Upon retirement, accounts would yield an annuity payment of about $1,000 a year, “hardly a windfall,” Shiller said.
But he also adjusted for what he expects to be lower future rates of investment return by using historic rates of return from international stock and bond markets. Those returns “correspond more closely to projections of financial economists and should be emphasized more as the appropriate evaluation of the accounts going forward,” Shiller wrote.
The results were not encouraging: The life-cycle portfolio under these adjusted returns lost money compared with the traditional system 71 percent of the time, with a median rate of return of just 2.6 percent, $2,000 less in annual benefits than those of workers who stick with the traditional system.

Another reason for justifiable public nervousness about these accounts is the increasing problem of income volatility for American families. Here are some excerpts from an excellent article by Daniel Gross in the Sunday New York Times summarizing relevant recent research on this problem and its implications for the debate around Bush’s private accounts plan:

After mining data from the Panel Study of Income and Dynamics, a database produced by the University of Michigan that tracks the incomes of the same families over a 40-year period, scholars have concluded that incomes are much less stable – i.e., much more volatile – today than they have been in the past. “There has unequivocally been general upward-trend income volatility since at least 1975,” said Bruce A. Moffitt, the Krieger-Eisenhower professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, who, with Professor Gottschalk, wrote one of the first papers on income volatility in the 1990’s. “It accelerated in the 1980’s, turned down in the early 1990’s, and then accelerated into the end of the 1990’s.”
According to a measure of volatility constructed by Jacob S. Hacker, a Yale political scientist, which tracks the five-year moving average of family incomes, income volatility rose 88 percent between 1978 and 2000.
“The problem in the past few decades,” Professor Moffitt said, “is that volatility has risen while real incomes haven’t risen.” What’s more, income volatility has grown significantly for those who can afford it least. A series of articles last year in The Los Angeles Times, written by Peter G. Gosselin, who worked closely with Professor Moffitt and other scholars, reported that in the 1970’s, income for middle-class Americans tended to fluctuate by 16 percent a year. But in the 1980’s and 1990’s, middle-class incomes fluctuated an average of 30 percent. For those whose earnings placed them in the bottom fifth, income volatility rose from 25 percent in the early 1970’s to 50 percent in recent years.
Because of other longstanding trends in the economy, strong income volatility can wreak greater havoc now than it did in the past. “The old view among economists was that income volatility didn’t affect consumption much,” said Raj Chetty, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. It was generally thought that when families’ incomes fell sharply and unexpectedly, they would borrow, tap into savings or send a second adult (frequently a mother) into the work force rather than sharply reduce consumption. But, Professor Chetty said, “that no longer seems to be the case today.”
Why? Many families already rely on two incomes. What’s more, fixed commitments have risen as a percentage of total income. In her book, “The Two-Income Trap,” Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy specialist at the Harvard Law School, found that the typical American household in the early 1970’s spent about 54 percent of its income on big fixed expenses – home mortgage, health insurance, car, child care – with the rest left over for discretionary spending. By the early part of this decade, however, the typical family was spending 75 percent of its income on these large fixed costs. “They’re spending much more of their income on things that can’t be cut back quickly,” said Professor Warren. “If you lose income suddenly, you can’t decide to sell off one bedroom or decide to cover only half of your family” with insurance.
The factors that functioned as internal shock absorbers for families have weakened. And so, too, have external buffers. Over the last three decades, the percentage of workers covered by defined-benefit pension plans and employer-provided health insurance – guarantees that provide ballast for fluctuating incomes – has declined. Add this to the trend of rising volatility – especially for people in the lower and middle income levels – and it’s easy to understand the reluctance to transform a government program that guarantees seniors an income.

Exactly. No wonder the public isn’t chafing at the bit to sign up for Bush’s private accounts plan. In today’s economy especially, Bush’s approach just seems too risky. That’s why, when Bush tells people over and over that they shouldn’t worry about risk and that they’ll all be big winners with private accounts, the public doesn’t buy it and, instead, keeps on telling pollsters they disapprove heavily of the job Bush is doing in the Social Security area.
There’s a message there for the president, albeit not one he apparently cares to hear.

The latest GOP ploy to suppress free speech and subvert checks and balances has run into a major roadblock. As a showdown approaches over the so-called “nuclear option,” which would change Senate rules to require 51 votes to cut off debate on judicial nominees, instead of 60, a new Newsweek Poll reports that 57 percent of Americans oppose the idea, with 32 percent supporting it. The poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International 3/17-18, found an even greater margin of disapproval among self-identified Independents, 60-31 percent.