Dionne: First Ripple of a Political Tidal Wave?

[grytpype]

Lots of op-eds in the Tuesday WP about Bush, how badly he farked up Iraq, and how much trouble he's in. Here's one:

First Ripple of a Political Tidal Wave?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A23

SEATTLE -- Rep. Jay Inslee knows about political tidal waves, because one of them almost sank his political career.

Inslee, who now represents a suburban Seattle district, was tossed out of Congress from another district in the 1994 Republican sweep. "When you see a tidal wave go over your head about 35 feet high," Inslee says, "you notice it."

But he came back to the House in 1998, and now what he's seeing "is the same tidal wave moving in the opposite direction. . . . There's a passion out there." And the passion, Inslee says, is running against George W. Bush.

...

...new conservative media, particularly Rush Limbaugh and his imitators along the AM radio dial, came into their own in 1994. A decade later, the new media growth is in a chorus of left-of-center Web sites and, of course, Michael Moore, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest-grossing documentary of all time over the weekend. Moore bids to become the Democrats' answer to Limbaugh.

[Cha]

1. Oh, bless Jay Inslee's Heart!

I didn't know he had that history of a "tidal wave"...I bet this one feels especially Good to him. Me, too!

Yee Haw!
"Baird, a psychologist who has worked with statistics, is also skeptical of making too much of anecdotes. But he is running across plenty of them on the anti-Bush side. "If you contrast this campaign to the campaign of four years ago, you saw George Bush stickers everywhere and very few Al Gore stickers," he said. "Now, it's at least 50-50" between Bush and Kerry. Baird speaks of a man in a health club wearing a John Kerry T-shirt who told him: "What you have to understand is that I am a lifelong Republican." And the congressman chuckles over a car he spotted that "had an American flag, an 'I'm the NRA' bumper sticker and a John Kerry bumper sticker"



EDIT: And this bit at the end is Very Interesting..

"But there is one last bit of evidence suggesting that Inslee and Baird are on to something. In late August 2002, at the beginning of the buildup to the Iraq war, a Pew Research Center poll found that only 37 percent of Americans felt Bush had laid out a case for military action; 52 percent felt he had not.

In other words, millions of middle-of-the-road Americans had doubts about the war before it started. Many of those doubters eventually went along with the president but now question the war and the way the administration handled it. If Inslee is right about his tidal wave, the doubters will give it its power."

[MsUSA]

2. Speaking of bumper stickers......

Jay indicates he has seen about 50/50 Kerry to Bush stickers....I can't say that around La Crosse, Wisconsin, I've seen way more Bush stickers. :(