Kind of....Look at it this way, despite your pension, everyone's portfolio has taken a giant hit since the market collapsed in March 2000, joblessness is up, raises are not great, everyone in the business world is chirping about how soft the economy is, only recently have economic indicators begun to show mild upticks and .....On top of all that, Alan Greenspan keeps trying to jump start the economy, or at least keep it from slipping back into stagnancy. So true or not in your eyes, Bush is at risk.
I am in the same situation as you are, but then I am not in manufacturing where outsourcing is very real and is taking away the middle class jobs that Bush needs to stay here so those folks (they are the ones who like it when we do the right thing , like going into Iraq) will vote for him. Bush's position right now is very precarious if you ask me. People at this site tend to look at things with a very jaundiced eye when it comes to polling. I am as right winged and conservative as they come, but if you eliminate all the chatter here and look at enough polling data, Bush is slipping....Newsweek, California has him below 50% since the Iraq war, Zogby.....forget about whether they are 100% correct, his numbers are slipping and that is what the consensus of all these polls reveals.
And one of the biggest things, people are just foaming at the mouth about this, is the overtime rules change. I can make a conservative philosophical argument why that's the right thing to do. From a political and P.R. standpoint, I can't put into words how stupid I think that move is, especially a year before the election.
Now, I personally do not believe you can lay economic problems totally at the feet of the president of the U.S., whether it's Bush I and II, Clinton or Millard Fillmore, because I think business cycles are beyond human control. But rightly or wrongly, people think the guy in the Oval Office is the one responsible for making things right. Not Greenspan, not the Treasury Secretary, but the president. And I know things are turning around, but how fast are they going to turn around? Again, I realize it's not going to happen overnight, but I think this country has collective ADHD when it comes to patience.