Back to work for me. I have almost everything wrapped, and now am going to start another batch of cookies.
I think the news is outstanding!
I figure it this way:
The Nation breaks along a political continuum, with about one-third that support the laws and respect the country and tend to back a right-wing candidate (for sake of argument, we'll call those Conservatives, who tend these days to vote Republican), and another third that hasn't got a political clue - the folks who, when asked by Jay Leno and late night show crowd "who is the President of the United States," respond by saying "George Washington" (we'll call those folks "moderates" - the media calls them "swing voters"), and a final third that thinks the President is evil incarnate and the United States is wrong to actually attempt to hold people accountable for their actions (we'll call this final group Democrats, or liberals [very little difference anymore]).
Regarding National Security: The President appears to have (surmizing from the numbers) locked down both the Conservatives and the Great Unwashed moderates (on the assumption there ain't no way in heck the liberals could ever touch his name on the touch screen [we already know they can't deal with punch cards]), but that Gov. Dean can't even garner the support of liberals - weighing in at only somewhat over two-thirds. Translation - the notion that Gov. Dean is spouting (the war in Iraq is wrong) just isn't hunting, EVEN AMONG THE LEFTISTS!
Regarding traditionally liberal domestic issues. Gov. Dean appears to have the liberals sewed up on this, but can't seem to get a whole lot of traction on this in the middle and right. President Bush, however, (again working on the contra assumption from earlier that a conservative wouldn't be caught dead voting for a leftist) seems to have captured the entire right-wing and a fair amount of the middle on this issue.
Translation: Based on this early poll, if the contestents for the 2004 election are Howard Dean and George Bush, then George Bush cleans Dean's clock on foreign policy, and mops the floor with him on domestic issues.
What's left? Bush wins running away. As long as Republicans don't go to sleep with this kind of news and stay home thinking it's a done deal, it's little wonder the Criminal Party apparatchiks are apolplectic. There is almost nothing good for them in the current poll if Dean is their candidate, and yet...
Howard Dean is increasingly the candidate of choice for the left. Fully 31% of Democrats support Gov. Dean, the only member of the Criminal Party wannabes in double digits.
And add to that Ralph Nader (yep, HE'S BAAACCCK!) is considering another independent run - which will only siphon votes from the leftist candidate.
It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.