Everywhere I go these days, people ask me one question: Can Bush be beat?
I believe the answer is yes.
I doubt the economy will rebound fast enough (if it does at all) to nudge the unemployment figures much below 6 percent.
I doubt wages will rise in real terms, especially with the slashing of state budgets around the country.
And I doubt the occupation of Iraq will get any rosier any time soon. U.S. soldiers are sitting ducks there, and as Iraqi nationalists and Islamic
fundamentalists keep taking potshots at them, the patience of the American people will gradually run thin, especially as Bush's pretexts grow more
embarrassing by the minute.
Bush dragged the nation into Iraq on a leash of lies, and the American people now have a chronically sore neck.
An interesting poll appeared last month in the Chicago Tribune. While the poll found that 57 percent of Illinois voters approved of the job Bush was
doing, only 42 percent were prepared to vote for him again. An equal number did not want to see him reelected.
So all those astronomically high approval ratings we've been seeing for twenty months now don't automatically translate into four more years of
plutocracy.
I don't counsel despair. I never counsel despair.
And as I travel around the country, I sense an anger and an intensity from people on the progressive side that I've not encountered, even in the
depths of the Reagan days. Karl Rove, you've got your work cut out for you.
-- Matthew Rothschild
www.progressive.org...