Jeff Koopersmith

Panic, Shock Grip Bush-Rove Team at 1600 Pennsylvania
Junior Bush's political aides, handlers and tutors -- caught off guard by plummeting public opinion -- huddle in secret!
66% of Americans not likely to vote to reelect Junior!
Worse yet, hardly anyone is paying attention to the White House tax or health scams...
By Jeff Koopersmith

Jan. 16, 2003 -- WASHINGTON (APJP) -- It isn't much of a surprise to me that George W. Bush's poll numbers are circling the drain. One need only look to the left, the right, up, or down to realize that almost nothing is going well, America. But then you'd have to have been off the planet for a couple years not to know that since the former Texas governor took office as the putative "President" of the United States at the wily invitation of five members of the United States Supreme Court, things have been headed down hill.

UPDATE: Jan. 18, 2003 -- WASHINGTON (APJP) -- The latest CNN/TIME poll numbers, just out today but NOT posted to their web site (could this be the work of Karl Rove?), show Junior's F-score down again -- to 53%. That's just about twenty points below that of Bill Clinton the day he was impeached. We can only assume that Rove will present his "boss" with two scenarios to boost these plummeting numbers: 1) Get his war with the wily Saddam on quick; or 2) Get a girlfriend! --The Editors

Let's take a look.

• The economy is tanking.
• Corporate leaders, including Vice President Cheney, are facing investigations for the worst kinds of thievery from their stockholders.
• The United States is loathed by most foreign populations and nearly all governments around the world, including our allies -- and yes, together with Great Britain, despite the masquerade from British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
• Unemployment has nearly doubled in the past 18 months, and huge layoffs in the near future have already been announced.
• United Airlines is the first of many major air carriers to go into bankruptcy.
• The Bush "Administration" -- egged on by heretofore high approval ratings, largely the result of what they see as a gift from God (those events of September 11, 2001) -- has not found a single shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein has or is planning to use "weapons of mass destruction" against the United States or anyone else save for a few "empty" warhead that "could" have contained some sinister stuff before being discarded.
• Mr. Bush has failed in his promise to catch or kill Osama bin Laden. Not a single important Al Qaeda member has been to trial or punished.
• Meanwhile, the Attorney General, John "Southern Partisan" Ashcroft, is engineering the arrest of American citizens, among others, without due process of law -- and locking "illegal combatants" up in Cuba beyond the not-so-vigilant eyes of America's media.
• And, of course, all the news you hear, see or read about all of the above -- and so many other issues and events -- is controlled by a handful of corporate CEOs who back the ideals of the Bush family, the Republican Party, and extremist ultra right wing ideologues.
• News programming has become a twenty-four hour a day sham. Talk radio is dominated by Neo-fascist commentators, and more than 80 million Americans get ALL their news from talk radio according to recent surveys.
• When liberals or progressives attempt to present their points of view they are shouted down, ignored, smirked at by television and radio hosts -- or see the programs that they host canceled
• Medical care is so costly that an average family of four pays more than $12,000 a year in premiums -- not including pharmaceutical care. Drug prices have skyrocketed and the White House sits by, promising pharmaceutical "aid" to seniors but doing nothing to deliver on the promise. Americans in the super majority are begging for government-sponsored health care -- and not a single source is reporting this phenomenon. Drug companies gave more money to right-wing candidates last year than any other sector of industry.
• The White House has sent more than 100,000 young Americans off to the Middle East to prepare for a war that the entire world, free or otherwise, opposes.
• And it does not help that George w. Bush looks and acts like a buffoon, sneering and smirking, thumbing his nose at all foreign leaders asking him to take an attack on Iraq more slowly and definitely more seriously.
• The Attorney General spent more than $25,000 to cover the naked bosom of the bronze statue of Blind Justice outside his office -- probably the most expensive burkha in history. And Mr. Ashcroft is down on his knees praying to Jesus every morning -- in although representing a nonsectarian justice system and a nation with a Constitution that clearly and literally separates church from state.
• Mr. Bush has decided that giving minorities extra points on college admission scores is "unconstitutional" and is filing an amicus curiae brief to this effect in the Supreme Court -- even while paying lip service to fair and ethical treatment of unfairly treated black and Hispanic citizens.
• Interest rates are about to skyrocket -- and the last bubble of wealth, personal real estate values, is about to burst. Personal bankruptcies are at all-time highs, but the White House is busy pressuring Congress to make certain that working people cannot declare bankruptcy in any way that will free them from debt so that they might make a fresh start.
• In Mississippi and many other southern states the rate of illiteracy among minorities is over 65%.
• Mr. Bush has proposed tax cuts that help the wealthy and largely ignored and insulted the working poor by giving them a tax cut that will not even cover their annual cable televisions bills.
• Progressive leaders are concentrating on driving people out of their SUVs -- when they might better spend their time and money driving the Vice President from office for the crimes he committed while Chairman of Halliburton, an oil services company which not only overstated its profits under the tutelage of Cheney-hired Arthur Andersen (itself a convicted felon) but also traded with Iraq under a Cayman Island corporation cooked up by Cheney and his board after Cheney lobbied Congress hard to insert loopholes in Iraqi sanctions to allow such "oil bidniss" on a more regular basis.
• The homeless are being driven out of one city and into another rather than being provided with food and shelter as one would do for any pathetically poor stranger.
• HMOs persist on denying medical care to the mentally ill and instead out them on the streets to be raped, murdered and maimed.
• The chasm between rich and poor in America is widening to 19th Century proportions. Union strength has been decimated to such an extent that collective bargaining has become an inside joke on Washington's K Street
• The White House has now shut down all the streets surrounding it and placed batteries of surface to air missiles around its perimeter.
• The Vice President hides out in bunkers, ostensibly to be able to save the Republic if and when Washington is attacked by some unnamed source.
• We are about to spend $2 trillion of OUR money on a war for which we are unprepared and from which we may not be able to extricate ourselves.

In short, the nation has gone partially insane -- and television news has utterly failed to notice.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Monday, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. I like Joe Lieberman a lot, but he is a conservative Democrat, and his laudable links to religion and ethics make him too like the neoconservative right and therefore unable to create a large enough semantic differential between himself and Mr. Bush. Added to this is America's penchant for bigotry and racism -- something that does not show up well in polls.

As an aside, I recall sitting in several one-on-one meetings with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's staff when he was running for governor of California.

All the polls showed Bradley ahead -- even at the end.

I reminded the group, the day before the election, about what Vernon Jordan calls "America's dirty little secret": racism. I told them to make certain that the GOTV (get out the vote) operations were in the highest gear. They pooh-poohed those comments.

Of course, Bradley lost, and in hindsight I look like a guru -- but in fact I believe that Democrat campaign professionals often hide their heads in the sand when it comes to assessing just how far right wing Republicans will go to win.

Another example similar to this one is the congressional seat held by Peter Kostmeyer in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Kostmeyer was challenged by a the perfect family man -- Jim Coyne, a textbook example of a Republican half-wit who only lasted one term before voters threw him out of office. I was running a Senate campaign at the time. I noticed for two weeks straight prior to the election that local pastors were preaching anti-gay sermons from pulpits around the county. After some checking I found that RNC operatives had been briefing the clergy -- and telling them that Kostmeyer was gay. To be honest, I don't know if he is gay, but it worked and Peter had to find a new job that next year.

The same will happen to Lieberman.

A whispering campaign will begin, fueled by the Republican National Committee or their assigns about trusting "Jews" to run the country. It will get dirtier that that behind closed doors, but the public line might be that Lieberman could not be trusted to do the "right thing" concerning Israel and the Middle East because he of his heritage.

Yes, it stinks, and it will never show in the polls, but it will raise its ugly head as it has a hundred times before in less important races.

Other announced candidates or those already having set up fundraising committees include Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Missouri Representative Dick Gephardt, and North Carolina Senator John Edwards. The Rev. Al Sharpton, Florida Sen. Bob Graham, and former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart are also seriously considering a challenge for the nomination.

The jury is still out on Governor Howard Dean of Vermont but a private dinner with Washington's Democrat elite occurs next week -- so we shall see.

North Carolina's John Edwards, a litigator with an excellent reputation and a one-term US Senator, is the fair-hared boy of the moment. Although he trails Lieberman and Kerrey among Democrats polled, I am not aware of a poll done after the Lieberman announcement. A Gallup Poll of 438 self-identified democrat voters and leaners completed on 12 January, before Lieberman's stepped up PR efforts and before his formal announcement, showed the following:

Lieberman is in a close race with three other candidates. At 19% support among Democrats, Lieberman has a statistically significant lead over all candidates except Kerry, who is preferred by 16% of Democrats. Gephardt at 13% and Edwards at 12% comprise the second tier of candidates, while Graham (7%), Hart (5%), Sharpton (4%), and Dean (4%) all poll below 10%.

The results are very similar among Democrats who are registered to vote

The most interesting finding from Gallup, based on other research, is that a plurality of Democrats would support Hillary Clinton if the New York Senator and former First Lady decided to run.

Remember that all these numbers mean exactly nothing, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton's. For anyone interested, no politician ignores numbers this high, at this stage. Even though Senator Clinton demurs for now, there is nothing standing in her way later if a strong candidate does not emerge from the pack -- except for Fox News that is.

Senator John Kerry has not done as well as should be expected from one the best known and best funded of the group. I reserve judgment on Kerry and do not agree that his demeanor works against -- him although some feel he appears pompous and sort of foppish. The big issue is how the Democrat candidate will look juxtaposed against George W, Bush. If the economy remains in a slump and Bush's war plans backfire, a slightly snobby patrician "look" might look "mighty fine" against the forklift-driver image of George W.

To my mind, Dick Gephardt, despite my admiration for him, is not much for the current field. Gephardt has been around -- and has been mentioned and even battled as a presidential candidate before. He lost. To be perceived as a loser among a large pack of otherwise qualified potential winners is not pretty. Just ask Al Gore -- who, by the way, won the presidential in 2000 despite what the Supreme Court might tell you.

I like Bob Graham of Florida, but he will have to emerge long and strong to do battle with the already-announced and talked-about candidates in this pack. Let's see if he can muster the money and strength to do so.

But there is one overriding point that begs to be made -- and I know I am not alone in my opinion on this one: thus far, none of these candidates particularly inspires me because none presents a clear-cut difference for the nation. George W. Bush -- or more specifically, his maniacal political advisor Karl Rove -- will be able to easily co-opt most platform planks I've heard these candidates talk about.

On the other hand, the good news for Democrats is that George W. Bush is starting to tank in the polls despite what you may hear from the mainstream media.

Although the economy seems to look just a tiny bit better, Bush's "F scores" are dropping, and people appear to be tired of his spoiled teenager routine wherein he sneers and snorts like an adolescent caught in the attic smoking as he threatens that he'll get Saddam Hussein "no matter what."

Bush looks like a spoiled schoolboy to most of the world -- and at least 66% of Americans, 34% of who say they will definitely vote against Bush in 2004 and 32% who say they might vote against him.

This number seems to be wasted on -- or intentionally ignored by -- the mainstream media. Nonetheless, if I were Rove, I would be throwing chairs through the window about now.

Any professional will tell you that these numbers change daily -- and they do. But today, Democrat strategists know two simple facts.

(1) Bush is beatable.

(2) All Democrats have to do is move 16-17% of the "might vote against Bush" column into the "definitely won't vote for that little twit" column within the next two years.

In fact, today, Bush can only count on votes form 36% of American registered voters -- less than the percentage of voters who are registered Republicans (source: Gallup Poll).

So take heart, liberals and progressives.

Maybe the beginning of the end for the Bush Administration is near.

Or, maybe not.