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"But why is that? Do you think it has anything to do with the way the Republican agenda is reported? Most people get their info from media soundbites -- all it has been since Bush took office is doom and gloom."

Some, but not mostly. Because the news that people are getting is not really wrong.
Consider, for example, the polling for this election.
Now, we were all screaming that the polls were wrong.
Well, actually, the polls were right.
It might be argued that it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, but I don't think that's it at all.

Consider two other issues:

The War.
The War IS going badly. It was always going to be hard, but it's harder than it needs to be. It ISN'T just that the media is all reporting bad news. There really is a lot of bad news. The President says "Stay the Course", but "The Course" does not seem to end in victory, ever. That's a real problem. It isn't enough to shout that the Democrats want to pull out and lose - that's true, they do. We also have to say how we plan to WIN. And we can't do that. The plan SEEMS to be (and actually IS) to just hold on, with minimal forces, and hope things turn out for the best. That ends in defeat anyway, because things won't turn out for the best. So, folks can look at the Democrats and say "Lose now", or the Republicans and say "Lose in two years, or three, after losing a lot more men and having more crippled", and they can RATIONALLY say "If we're going to lose anyway, let's just get it done with and save our boys."
If the Republican leadership wants to counter that pessimistic view, then they damned well have to have a plan, and say what it is, and do it. They haven't. The media report the death and carnage. The President doesn't counter with anything but "Stay the course", which evidently doesn't convince the public that the sightline doesn't end on defeat in the end anyway.

Illegal Immigration.
Conservative Republicans oppose it.
Democrats support it.
Businesses like to use the labor.
The media doesn't misreport the debate. It supports illegal immigration, rather blatantly. It doesn't pretend that conservative Republicans support it. Certainly the President himself supports what amounts to amnesty. So, the media has reported a three-way division in the electorate. The media didn't CREATE that division. It's real enough. And it cuts against Republicans because it mobilizes Hispanics against them, AND it demoralizes conservative Republicans because they don't agree with the President. Immigration will be presented by the media as having been AN issue after the election, because it WAS.

There are more issues: stem cell, abortion...

The media doesn't inaccurately print the Republican position. The problem is that INDEPENDENTS, who win elections, are not nearly as socially conservative as conservative Republicans.

Etc.

The public, and apparently yourself, do not understand the nature of the war, or conflict that we are involved in.

It is not a offensive war, like WWII. It is a longterm defensive/offensive chess game that will last for decades.

Each potion of it has differing goals. Victory in Iraq offensively was achieved long ago. We are now doing nation building, which is difficult at best, and often impossible, but we have no choice.

If we pull out, we will be going back in within a few short years, and this time, we will have no allies, and no countries that will even pretend to share the burden.

The Democrats do not have a plan. They will not be able to change anything in any significant way. This war has from the beginning, been conceived and executed by the best military on the planet, and it does not get any better than that.

If the public loses faith in the necessity of what we are trying to do in Iraq, and subsequently causes us to withdraw before we achieve our goals, it will leave us with no defense against what Iraq will become, and our economy will suffer. This means everything to us, and when this happens the public will be asking for nuclear retaliation, when all it needed to do was stay the course in Iraq.

We are nearly done there. The worm will turn within the next two years. If we do something stupid now, we will pay dearly for it down the road and so will the global economy and the rest of the planet.

There are some very high stakes here, and few people really understand just how high they are.

It would be a travesty to learn how high the stakes of failure are as a result of failure, but some are thick headed and require learning things the hard way.

The problem is that we all will suffer for it, if it happens.