For Democrats, Wave Is Building - WaPo

[rndmprsn]

seeing more and more of these optimistic reports from the field and polls, lets hope to god there is a wave...can everybody help out and do the wave, stadium style, in unison?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401391.html

There's probably no way congressional Republicans can lose this fall, no matter how unpopular President Bush is or how unhappy the voters are with the war in Iraq. That's the prevailing view in Washington today.

But it's wrong.

If history is any guide, we're heading into a major political storm. And that means we could see a national tide in November that will sweep the Democrats back into the majority.

Virtually every public opinion measure points to a Category 4 or 5 hurricane gathering. Bush's job-approval rating is below 40 percent, and congressional job approval is more than 10 percentage points lower. Only a quarter of the electorate thinks the country is moving in the right direction, and voters are unhappy with the economy under Bush. Finally, Democrats hold a double-digit lead as the party the public trusts to do a better job of tackling the nation's problems and the party it would like to see controlling Congress...

...But my own reading is that the odds favor a Democratic takeover of the House. The 15 seats that the party needs for a bare majority is well below the range of minority-party gains in past tidal-wave elections. The national winds blowing against the GOP are strong and have not diminished over the past nine months. Credible progress on the ground in Iraq before November is implausible. The public's harsh evaluation of the president's performance on the economy is unlikely to be reversed by Election Day. Prospects for significant legislative achievements in the remaining months of this Congress are remote. Enough seats will be in play (including some that Republicans carried in 2004 with more than 60 percent of the vote) to allow Democrats to gain majority status in the House.

[bronxiteforever]

1. also, the economy is tanking-big time

it is absoultely amazing it took this long given the endless list of failure of the GOP and its corrupt ways-the GOP can't govern and the proof is in the last 5 years-when we win the problem becomes how to clean-up the mess!!!!

2. Welcome to DU Bronxite

[bronxiteforever]

11. thank you

been a friendly lurker for years

[MissWaverly]

4. The press is still sugar coating the problems

even this article says that the Republicans may be able to turn this around. The only
way they can do that is locking out the minority voters and hacking the vote. Hacking
the vote is not going to work, people are waking up to fraud, and the Republicans can
no longer wrap themselves up in the flag with Putin laughing at US, it obivious that
we have made major mistakes in foreign diplomacy and have become the butt of the
world's criticism and derisive laughter.

[calico1]

5. Welcome to DU Bronxiteforever.

Bronx, NY? I grew up there. :hi:

[bronxiteforever]

10. thanks-me too

[ginnyinWI]

3. people are starting to feel the pinch personally

Gas prices are up, home heating costs are up, the stock market is shaky, interest rates rising, deficit is growing, jobs are leaving, and health care costs have gone way up.

The planet is heating up, causing droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, changes in the weather that people can see with their own eyes.

And people see a world full of unrest and growing militancy by groups that oppose us.

These realities will override any kind of GOP spin for thinking people. Besides, they are out of slogans now and are simply recycling. And people are sick of it.

Never mind that small but very vocal minority of Brownshirts; the rest of us are done with them.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. In general, people don't like to be duped into being responsible for

sundry items such as war crimes, abandoned citizens during a natural disaster, the rape of the treasury, illicit contracts given to friends of the vice, and collateral damage "over there". Why is the learning curve so damn steep? Fear... spoon fed and wiped from their chins in case it should fall to the floor unused.

[Autumn Colors]

7. Factor in Diebold

If Diebold is tallying the majority of the votes cast, it doesn't matter how many people vote or how big the "tidal wave" is. The totals reported by the touchscreen machines will have repugs winning by just a large enough percentage not to trigger automatic recounts.

It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes.

If we don't get rid of the touchscreen machines before then, public sentiment really won't matter. You think people are going to go out into the streets and raise hell?

Hardly. People have too little time and are too tired from trying to work multiple jobs just to pay the bills. What little time that's left goes to trying to have some sort of time with the family or just catching a few hours of sleep.

Sorry, I know I'm going to get reamed for the pessimism, but unless the touchscreen problem is fixed, I really won't start feeling hopeful about any of this.

EDIT: Present company excluded from that next-to-last paragraph. All of us here, are constantly raising hell, but if the rest of the population of this country doesn't join in, that's hardly going to make a revolution.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

8. You really think they can rig so many machines

in so many districts to elect so many specific people?

With the pretzeldent it was a lot easier- just a few people on one ballot. Now it's how many congressmen/women in how many states? The riggers will have their work cut out for them, and with so many variables someone is bound to fuck it up big time. If they try it nationwide this time there's a chance we can bust them with overwhelming proof.

I actually concur with you- I'm just trying to toss in some optimism.

[EST]

12. The election fraud which has occurred resulted from a lot of

smaller actions in local districts, albeit more so in key states. The hacks that have been discussed, as well as the possibly many yet to be discovered, have easy application across many, many machines, and in the case of a software backdoor, can be applied to a huge number of machines at once.
I guess I'm feeling a bit argumentative, today, but it seems that there are enough and more "family values" gangsters on the side of the fascist republicans, in all the local races, to destroy any remaining credence that may remain in the electoral process.
The fraud is wide and deep and I am now looking much more suspiciously at people I used to have an unquestioned trust in, simply because they have refused to yank this bunch of crooks up short and have proven totally worthless as patriotic Americans, having some other agenda that renders them incapable of clear thinking and rational decision making.

[Warpy]

9. People around here are ANGRY

but unless the Democrats start talking about the ECONOMY, don't expect many of them to do anything but vote for bad incumbents.