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Thursday, August 31, 2006
One bad week in August
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just weeks ago, it appeared possible that Democrats might succeed in making Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House this November — and if all broke their way, might even succeed in taking control of the U.S. Senate, too. While I’m no expert, my gut feeling is that — in the absence of some major disaster for Republicans and for President Bush — the approaching Labor Day weekend brings promising news for the party in power.
A recent Gallup Poll indicates that the two parties are about even in voter preference. Democrats still enjoy a slight lead, 49 to 44 percent in August, but in July and August the Democrats’ lead had been 13 points. If, as has been their pattern, Democrats come up with another empty hand in November, one week in August will loom large. That’s the week of August 7th. On Tuesday the 8th, with the defeat of Joe Lieberman, the national party reconstituted along the lines of a bumper sticker I saw recently: “I’m against the next war, too.” You can’t trust people like that in leadership positions.
Just as that shift was settling in on the American electorate, word came out of Britain that jihadists were plotting to blow up a number of airliners over the Atlantic. The two events, hours apart, turned the country from its drift to pacfiism, stabilized the President’s base, and reversed the Republican slide. It’s no surprise that, when he was in Atlanta last week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said the Senate’s attention between now and the election will be on security, not immigration, the hot-button issue through much of this year.
Incidentally, on another subject, throughout the early days of this blog, I was struck by how much the mere hint of religion sent many of our left-of-center contributors off the deep end. This was at a time, you recall, when Ralph Reed was a candidate and, because of his background, religion and politics were intertwined. Gallup clears up the mystery, such as it was. Interviews with 5,000 registered voters over the past three months reveals that frequency of church attendance is a strong indicator among whites of whether somebody is likely to vote Democrat or Republican. Frequent church-goers, on a generic ballot, prefer Republicans by a 24 percentgage point margin. Infrequent church-goers favor the Dems by 17 points. Non-whites, church-goers or not, favor Democrats by 59 points.
Two unrelated questions from the same poll: What trends, or possible events, favor Democrats or Republicans? And are we really that polarized by religion? And why? If so, that can’t be a good sign for the country.
