The Democrats are making the mistake of taking on Bush head-on, thankfully. They have concluded that Bush's election coattails are too long, and that they have to knock him down for the November mid-term elections for their candidates in Congress to have a chance of recapturing the House and holding the Senate.In my opinion, that strategy is fatally flawed. Consider that two weeks ago GWB's popularity was 74%. After the most recent Democratic smear campaign (i.e. another full frontal assault) against him, his popularity ROSE to 76%. They attacked him so many times (bumbler, idiot, doesn't know foreign policy, drunk, used cocaine, stole the election, unilateralist, Bush Knew, etc.) that the public has begun to resent all of these unfounded attacks on him. The American public, per the polls, no longer trusts the political attacks against GWB.
In the meantime, not only is GWB growing more popular, but the Democrats have no issues of their own to run on. They've "dropped" the gun control issue. Only in California have they tried to bring up the abortion issue. They aren't talking about school vouchers and they aren't talking about raising taxes any longer.
Right now the Democrats have dug themselves into an all-or-nothing hole for Election 2002.
Does anyone think that they will get it All, or that they will get Nothing out of that position?
In my opinion the Democrats are going to suffer heavily in this year's election.
Their frontal attacks on GWB have failed. They've dropped their own issues, and they have little or nothing to offer the public. Unions are leaving them because they don't support the new jobs that would be created by drilling in the ANWR. Hispanics are leaving them because the Democrats have been supporting Black candidates over Hispanics in office, have no prominent hispanics in Democratic positions of internal Party power, their leaders don't speak Spanish and they were opposed to the very popular friend of Bush, President Fox, in Mexico. Blacks are leaving them because Democrats are against school vouchers and because they see positive Republican role models in JC Watts, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and Secretary Paige. Jews are leaving them because Democrats like Hillary Clinton are kissing one of Yasser Arafat's wives, as well as because Senators such as Dodd and Boxer are schmoozing Israel's enemy in Cuba while calling for the embargo to be lifted there (thus freeing up more cooperation between Cuba and their Palestinian allies).
Plus, you've got pride in our military and pride in our nation back in vogue. Democratic Party calls for America to "change" to make the world a better place are simply NOT popular right now.