Cause of current Bush unpopularity?

[yurbud]

Bush has been down in the polls for while. Why do you suppose that is?

[WI_DEM]

1. the cost of gas and home heating pure and simple

Dems must run against Bush this year and tie every Republican to him and his failed policies.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. preys bee.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. His birth and subsequent survival n/t

Never has there been a better case for infanticide.

[kahleefornia]

4. terrorism is so 2001

Seriously, I think people are just bored with war.

[Marr]

5. He seems like a loser now. That's why.

The American people don't much care if their President starts unjust wars, or tortures innocents, or lies to them, or anything else. So long as he wins.

They don't care that the Iraq occupation is illegal or immoral, for instance. What pisses them off is that he's *losing*.

[bluerum]

6. You need a poll for this !!!??? OK - I'll vote. nt

[klook]

7. Not "winning" the war + high gasoline prices

Maybe I'm seeing this too cynically. But I really beieve that if the U.S. was seen as "winning" the war in Iraq, and if the price of gasoline dropped back below $2 a gallon for a few months, millions of Americans would be in love with Bush again. They wouldn't care how many crimes his administration and party have committed. Lots of them just want to wave the flag and keep driving.

What I'm hoping will save the nation is that there are enough of us who are outraged to turn this mess around.

[yurbud]

8. would there be way to win besides killing every Iraqi who doesn't kowtow?

[saltpoint]

10. Well, goddam those Iraqis, anyway! Here we go over there to liberate

their sorry butts and all they do is try to blow up our trucks 'n stuff.

They needed freedom, we brung it, and now they're flying off the handle. Sheesh!

[klook]

11. Who knows what they'd consider "winning"

...I'm not sure even another flight-suit photo-op with a new,improved "Mission Accomplished" banner made in China would do the trick. Possibly construction of a Disney amusement park in Baghdad would do the trick, but I get the feeling that's a ways off.

[saltpoint]

9. Toward the top of the list of misgivings would be gas prices.

U.S. drivers have gas-sucking cars and it pisses them off when they cant afford to drive frequently and far.

Way too far down on the list is the perception that Bush is treacherous, unstable, and possibly wacked out on some slurry of antidepressants and liquor, on top of the painful realization by voters that the man is dumber than a sack of concrete.

Blue voters got this before year 2000; some red voters are only now waking up.

People's lives have not gotten any better; in many cases they've gotten much worse.

Bush's Cabinet is generally unfriendly and is demonstrably unconcerned about the plights of the disenfranchised. Many of their policies assertively wound poor people. When Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Bush was on vacation and saw no reason to interrupt it. Some days later, as corpses were floating on the CNN screens piped into a million homes and airports, etc., the Bush administration finally got the message that Americans expected them to assume a leadership role.

And Iraq. Things didn't go as expected there, and even the most smarmy Republican columnist knows the gig is up.