Democratic Presidential Candidates
The Democratic presidential candidates will hold another in their seemingly endless series of debates tonight. This debate may have more significance than most, however, because it is being held in New Hampshire, scene of the first major primary on Jan. 27.
It's becoming clear that the Democratic race is boiling down to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean versus everyone else. Dean has substantial leads in every recent New Hampshire poll, he's the clear fund-raising leader among the Democratic candidates, and for months he has enjoyed the press coverage that comes from having been anointed by pundits and observers as the Democratic leader.
Now, for the first time, CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll results confirm Dean's front-runner status. Dean received 25% of the vote from Democrats who are registered to vote in our Dec. 5-7 poll, 8 points ahead of retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark (17%), and 11 points ahead of Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt (14%).
The poll also confirms the free-fall of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (widely quoted this weekend as having used a profane word to describe President Bush's Iraq policies). Kerry has faded to his lowest point yet -- only 7% of registered Democrats say he is their favorite, down from a high of 18% in April.
Much can change as Democrats begin the actual process of voting in Iowa next month. One factor that could shake up the race would be the decision of a candidate -- such as Kerry -- to drop out. But for now, Dean is in the driver's seat.
President Bush
Whether it's Dean or someone else who finally secures the Democratic nomination (the identity of the winner will be abundantly clear by February or March at the latest), the challenge of unseating George W. Bush is going to be substantial.
An incumbent is usually considered the favorite to win re-election unless there is evidence that voters are strongly dissatisfied with his or her performance in office, and/or unless there is a charismatic and compelling challenger. There is little evidence to suggest that Bush is in major trouble on either of these grounds -- so far.
I must underscore that this analysis must be delivered with a major caveat: All attempts to answer the question of who will win the presidency next November must be couched in equivocations; there is just too much that can (and will) change to predict with any certainty what will transpire on Election Day.
Still, it's useful to remember that there have only been three incumbents, since Herbert Hoover in 1932, who lost their bids for re-election -- Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bush. Ford was in many ways an accidental incumbent, elevated to the presidency after Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974. That leaves Carter and Bush as the only elected incumbents since Hoover to lose their re-election bids. In addition to Franklin Roosevelt's three successful re-election bids, six other post-World War II presidents (Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton) won their re-election bids relatively handily. It's clear that the odds seem to favor incumbents.
One of the major factors that harpooned both Carter's and Bush's re-election bids was a depressed economy. Both presidents also faced opponents (Reagan and Clinton) who managed to capture the public's imagination.
In contrast to either Carter or George H.W. Bush, President Bush currently has what is shaping up to be a positive economic environment in which to run.
The weekend CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, for example, shows that 57% of Americans give the current economy a "good" rating -- up 13 points since mid-October. Similarly, the percentage of Americans who say that the economy will be good next year at this time is now 73%, up from 64% in mid-October. These improved attitudes have been evident in most other national measures of consumer confidence released over the last month, putting Bush in a significantly better position than that of his father in the fall of 1991.
Consider this comparison. The current president gets a 48% job approval rating for handling the economy. His father, in a Dec. 5-8, 1991, Gallup Poll, received only a 22% economic approval rating.
Just as significantly, the current President Bush is sustaining an overall job approval rating above the magic 50% line. (It's now at 55%, up four points from just before Thanksgiving.) The most significant finding, in my opinion, is the fact that Bush's job approval ratings have basically stabilized in the 50% to 56% range over the last three months, and so far show no sign of the basic downward trend that affected his father's ratings at about this point in his re-election bid.
Here's one way to look at it: The changes from poll-to-poll in Bush job approval between mid-September and early December (encompassing eight polls) shows no clear trend: -2, +5, +1, -3, +1, -3, -1, +5. Bush's current job approval rating of 55% is actually three points higher than the 52% he obtained in our first September reading.
By way of contrast, the poll-to-poll changes in Bush the elder's job approval ratings from September to December 1991 were: -2, 0, -4, 0, -3, -3, -4, 0, 0, 0, -2, -2. Each poll showed no change or negative change, with not a single increase. The net result? Bush the elder went from a 68% job approval rating in September 1991 to a 50% rating in December -- a drop of 18 points.
This doesn't mean, of course, that the current President Bush's rating won't deteriorate in the coming year. But at this point he is certainly avoiding the same nosedive in approval ratings that afflicted his father. Iraq remains a major wild card for the presidential candidates. Gallup will be releasing an in-depth examination of the public's view on Iraq later this week, but the weekend poll shows that the public's approval of the way Bush is handling Iraq and foreign affairs have both gone up over the last month; the former from 45% to 50% and the latter from 46% to 53%.
Medicare
It's not clear that Bush is going to gain immediate public support from the new $400 billion Medicare bill that he signed into law on Monday. The bill represented a major push on the part of Bush and the Republicans in Congress to capture the affection of the potent 65+ voting bloc.
As I've noted before, most of the provisions of the new bill won't take effect until 2006, so it may take years for us to get an accurate read on exactly what the people think about it. The bill is exceedingly complex (678 pages long). The government isn't going to hand over a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for prescription drugs, nor will it open up federal drug stores dispensing free prescription drugs to everyone who shows up with a driver's license showing them to be over the age of 65.
The bill is much more complicated, involving a bizarre mix of deductibles, exclusions, and amounts above which and below which drug costs won't be reimbursed. The new law also makes numerous changes to Medicare, above and beyond the new prescription drug benefit. (That's probably why our weekend poll shows that 49% of those 65 and older are very concerned that the bill will be too complicated for Medicare recipients to understand.)
Despite the fact that there is probably not a single senior citizen alive who has yet figured out exactly what the new bill will eventually mean for his or her Medicare benefits, the new poll shows that seniors are trying to figure it out: 73% say they have read or heard at least a moderate amount about the new bill -- much higher than the percentage of those under 65 who have been paying attention.
Here's what we are finding in terms of seniors' initial impressions. The "new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients" part of the bill is favored by 46% of senior citizens, while 39% oppose it. At the same time, the more basic "changes made in Medicare coverage" are actually opposed by those 65 and older, 44% to 38%. What do these findings tell us?
I think we're seeing a significant resistance on the part of older Americans to the idea of tinkering with the basics of a Medicare system with which older Americans are fairly happy. Previous polling has shown that seniors are significantly less likely than those under 65 to feel that Medicare needs a major overhaul, and there is a pre-existing sentiment that whatever changes might be made to Medicare would do as much to goof up the system as make it better.
Whatever the long-term consequences of the new Medicare bill, will it have salubrious consequences for Bush and the Republicans in the coming election year? Some observers argue, not unrealistically, that Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress pushed the bill for obvious political purposes, given the fact of life that seniors constitute a critically important voting bloc.
But in the short term, we don't see a major political benefit for Bush or the Republicans. Seniors are no more likely to approve of how the Republicans in Congress handled the Medicare bill than they are to approve of how the Democrats handled it. Bush's overall job approval ratings for "prescription drugs for older Americans" and "Medicare" are at only 40% and 39%, respectively, far below his overall job approval rating.
The American Dime
Which president is currently pictured on the dime? In case you don't know, it's Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some members of Congress would like to see that changed. Republican Rep. Mark Edward Souder of Indiana is attempting to gain support for the idea of replacing FDR's likeness with that of Ronald Reagan. So far, Souder has convinced 80 other representatives to go along with his proposed "Ronald Reagan Dime Act."
It's going to take a lot of persuading to get the American public on board for this kind of change in the dime. Our weekend poll found that 82% of Americans oppose a bill that would remove FDR's portrait form the dime and replace it with a portrait of Reagan.