[Peace-discuss] He's a uniter (for democrats and progessives, that is)

[patton paul]

Survey: Anger Against Bush Growing Louder
By NANCY BENAC

WASHINGTON (AP) - In Arizona, Judy Donovan says she feels desperate for a
new president. In Tennessee, Robert Wilson says he finds the president
revolting. In Washington state, Maria Yurasek says she'd vote for a dog if
it could beat President Bush.

A subtext to this year's presidential campaign is the intense anger that
many Democrats are directing toward Bush, an attitude that has been
growing in recent months.

``I've never seen anything like it,'' says Ted Jelen, a political science
professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. ``There are people who
just really, really hate this person.''

Fully a quarter of Americans - mostly Democrats - tell pollsters they have
a very unfavorable opinion of the president, more than double the number
from last April. When only Democrats are polled, more than half report
they feel that way.

Further, in exit polls conducted during Democratic primaries, a sizable
chunk of voters have been describing themselves as not just dissatisfied
with Bush but outright angry - 51 percent in Delaware, 46 percent in
Arizona and New Hampshire, 44 percent in Virginia and Wisconsin.

``They really have a head of steam up against Bush,'' said Andrew Kohut,
director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. He said
the level of political polarization surrounding Bush, the division between
Republicans who favor him and Democrats who don't, exceeds even that for
President Clinton in September 1998 during the impeachment battle.

Plenty of presidents have generated intense feelings, of course, but
Democrats - and even some Republicans - think the phenomenon is outsized
this year.

``I've never seen a Democratic Party more unified and more focused, and
the anger helps do just that,'' said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. ``The
intensity level is just so high. They're using four-letter words to
describe him.''

In a recent focus group that Luntz conducted for MSNBC, technicians had to
adjust the volume levels because the Bush-haters were ``so gosh-darn
loud'' they were drowning out the president's supporters, who were more
numerous, Luntz said. ``It was a real problem.''

Bush was asked about the anger in a recent interview on NBC and said he
found it perplexing and disappointing. ``When you ask hard things of
people, it can create tensions. And heck, I don't know why people do it,''
he said.

His campaign spokesman, Terry Holt, dismisses the anger as something
stoked by Democratic presidential candidates and confined to core party
activists. He said it also reflects Democratic frustration at Bush's
success in pushing through his agenda.

John McAdams, a political scientist at Marquette University, said
resentment of Bush is particularly strong among liberals who already hold
three things against him: ``First, he's a conservative. Second, he's a
Christian. And third, he's a Texan. When you add all of those things up,
that invokes pretty much every symbol of the cultural wars.''

``It's particularly galling when somebody who mangles his syntax and
doesn't pronounce words extremely well and is from Texas beats you,''
McAdams added.

Some of the anger at Bush stretches back to his 2000 election, when the
president lost the popular vote but took the majority of electoral votes
after the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida.

``It's the long view of Bush in the minds of Democrats,'' said pollster
Kohut. ``He came into office in a way that they felt was unfair. They gave
him the benefit of the doubt and rallied to him after the 9-11 attacks for
some time, and then he disappointed them in the way he dealt with Iraq''
and by pursuing a more conservative course than they expected.

A Bush opponent can vote against the president only once in November, no
matter how intense the anger. So does it matter how much voters dislike
him, if these are people who would have voted against him anyway?

Political analysts say the intensity of the anti-Bush sentiment could
translate into higher turnout by mobilizing the Democratic base. The
possible pitfall for Democrats, however, is that strident anti-Bush
rhetoric could turn off swing and independent voters who like Bush
personally but might be convinced through reasoned argument that his
policies are wrongheaded.

``Anger is not necessarily a productive emotion when it comes to
politics,'' Luntz said. ``The anger against Bill Clinton was so fierce and
over the top that it helped him in 1996 and then again during the
impeachment in 1998. People got more angry at those yelling at the
president than at the president himself. You could easily see the same
thing happening here.''