Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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From Pillory to Post

Wednesday August 13, 2003

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During the spasm of California recall coverage last week, a couple of other things happened.

Al Gore delivered a speech; a speech which was unwatchable. MSNBC, which dearly wanted to carry the entire speech hurriedly cut away after about 15 minutes fearing that the 17 viewers who, having fallen asleep on the couch after Gore reached "Point Eight," might awaken and think they had slept into the middle of the night and were watching an infomercial for a Ronco Sleep-eze Doll.

The Washington Post, hardly an unofficial mouthpiece for the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign said of Gore's speech: "If [the Democratic candidates for President] listen to former vice president Al Gore, who took it upon himself last week to suggest a theme of attack, they will all go off the cliff."

The Pew Research Center, released a poll on Friday which showed that President Bush's job approval had slipped to 53%. This number was seized upon by all the cable nets to show that, as one put it, "The Democratic nomination for President might actually be worth something."

However, another polling organization (a small outfit known as Gallup) released a poll on Saturday which showed the Pew poll was aptly named.

The Gallup USA Today/CNN poll showed the President's job approval at 60%. About where it has been except for the upward spikes during times of national crisis. This was ignored by everyone.

The Washington Post, hardly an unofficial mouthpiece for the White House communications shop, issued a poll just yesterday which showed the President's overall job approval at 59% - unchanged from the previous month.

That same Gallup poll showed the following levels of support among Democrats for the announced candidates as follows:

Joe Lieberman - 18
Dick Gephardt - 15
Howard Dean - 15
John Kerry - 12
John Edwards - 5
Carol M-Brown - 5
Bob Graham - 5
Al Sharpton - 4
Dennis Kucinich - 2
Other, etc. - 19

On Monday, the Washington Post, hardly an unofficial mouthpiece for the National Republican Congressional Committee, had a front page story headed: "Democrats Unlikely to Retake House" by Juliet Eilperin. In the piece Ms. Eilperin led, "Numerous Democratic strategists have become convinced in recent months that their party is unlikely to pick up the dozen seats it needs to retake the House" largely because of Republican successes in redistricting after the 2000 census.

Also on Monday, Delaware Senator Joe Biden bowed out of the Presidential race before he even got in. He was getting out, he said, because he was behind the other nine candidates in fundraising and organization. Also, according to the Delaware News Journal, "Biden said the difficulty of jumping into the race late would have been compounded by the fact that political reporters are focused on the California governor's race."

Which gets us back to where we started: All Arnold all the time except for a little Gore which was too much.

Schwarzenegger who bolted out of the gate last Wednesday appears to only be growing in popularity among Californians.

Some Conservatives in California are openly voicing the opinion that a candidate like State Senator Tom McClintock might be their favorite, they would rather have a moderate Republican like Schwarzenegger than Gray Davis or even Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante.

And, in spite of the growing attempts to pillory Schwarzenegger by the Democrats, one poll released yesterday, he crossed the magic 50% level of people who say they would vote for him in the October 7 election and more than two-thirds said they would vote to recall Gray Davis.

In that same poll, Bustamante was running second - at 17 percent. And among Hispanics? Bustamante trails Schwarzenegger 2:1.

The Democrats running for President are lucky. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution is still in effect: No person except a natural born citizen � shall be eligible to the office of President.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to ALL the articles and polls listed above, a Mullfoto of the Mullmeister at Fox, and a pretty good Catchy Caption of the Day.

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