an interesting chart

[ginnyinWI]

Glenn Greenwald, disscussing *'s approval ratings, shows a chart which shows the change between the 2004 election and now. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html



Revisionist people who love to fault Kerry for "losing" the election should take another look. Of course we all know how unpopular * is now, but it wasn't nearly that bad back in 2004. At the time of the election this chart, anyway shows that * was more popular than unpopular. The people really hadn't totally soured on him. If only the election had been held one year later! President Kerry would be in the WH doing great things.

[MBS]

1. Oh, exactly right

Thanks for posting this. This should be spread around.

[ginnyinWI]

3. feel free to copy and paste

I've got it on my photobucket site and can host it. ;)

[blm]

2. The more news that came in about Katrina failures opened up eyes.

Eyes that could no longer remain shut, and allowed clearer viewing into Iraq and other failures of BushInc.

[ProSense]

4. Excellent find. Thanks. n/t

[karynnj]

5. Kerry was actually a victim of his own success

Looking for corresponding GHWB charts - I found a Washington Post article mostly about W, but his dad was at 33% approval in Oct 1992. This link has plots for all Presidents - but you need really good eyes to see it - it looks like GHWB was rarely above 40 in all of 1992. Kerry had a much much harder race.http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2005/11/presidential-approval-in-historical.html


But these are more interesting:

How the race looked in Jan 2004

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-01-07-bushpoll-usat_x.htm

and

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-01-06-bush-poll-usat_x.htm

The second is the most interesting - this was about 2 weeks before Iowa and Dean is first and Clark is closing in.

"Overall, 60% of those surveyed Friday through Monday approve of the job Bush is doing. And 55% say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, the highest level in nearly nine months.

In the poll, Bush beat Dean by 22 percentage points among likely voters. Against an unnamed Democrat, Bush won by 17 percentage points.

The survey shows a political landscape more favorable to Bush's re-election than that faced at this point by other recent presidents — by President Clinton in 1996, who won a second term, and by the first President Bush in 1992 and President Carter in 1980, who didn't."

This shows how much Kerry accomplished.

[ProSense]

6. Very interesting article. Thanks.

Crazy country. Sigh!

[ProSense]

7. The more I look at the OP chart and consider these articles,

the more angry I get. What the hell were Americans thinking?

They were against Bush (Gore won in 2000) before they were for Bush (predicated on 9/11) before they were against Bush (after the 2004 election; too damn late).

[JI7]

10. Kerry got higher percentage of votes in 2004 than Clinton in 1992

considering Clinton had everything that cw says are assets in a candidate such as being from the South, Governor, having charisma etc why didn't he get a higher percentage of votes . especially when you look at his opponents. also this was before the time of the whore media.

Clinton didn't get majority votes in 1996 either.

[cadmium]

8. Revealing chart. The usual thing I hear

from (not radical right-wingers) fairly reasonable people who voted for Bush was that at least Bush stood for something. They voted for Bush not against Kerry.

Now they say they didnt like Bush but the voted against Kerry not for Bush. Supporting Bush was the motivation in 2004 - revised in 2007 to opposing Kerry. They are the same people rationalizing the same vote. My assessment is that they just don't want to admit that they were scared into voting for Bush.

[wisteria]

9. You have that right.

They knew what they had or thought they had with Bush. They weren't allowed to get to know Sen. Kerry and they were frightened into voting for Bush. The media and Rove made sure Kerry's messages weren't heard and they suppressed information that would have helped Kerry.
I will never, ever trust the media to be honest and straight ever again.

[MBS]

11. This was so fascinating , I tracked down original source

Here it it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/02/02/CU2006020201345.html

The entire graph runs from 2001 to Jan 19, 2007. Graph date is posted as Dec 2006, but it looks like they're continuing to update it. If only the election had been held 5 months later. . Why oh why were our fellow citizens so tragically slow to catch on?

[ProSense]

12. Proud to have been among

the 6% of Americans who disliked the Crook in Chief even as the 9/11 tragedy was unfolding and always one of the blue liners.

Is this posted in GD/P?

[MBS]

14. not to my knowledge

If you'd like to, be my guest. I have my leg in a cast right now, and I'm not supposed to sit at computer for long, so I'm doing the minimum right now.

[ProSense]

16. Oh my!

I hope you don't have to wear it too much long. Take care of yourself.

[MBS]

15. PS I was also one of the proud 6%

the few, the proud, the smart :)
(I was shocked by those numbers, BTW. I knew that was W's peak, but. .. ??? Even after his deer-in-the-headlights moment reading My Pet Goat? And all because he went out there with a bullhorn? Were we really that stupid? Shocking)

[ginnyinWI]

17. I have not posted it anywhere--I'd be happy if you would.

Prosense you do wonderful posts.

[wisteria]

13. They followed the MSM and only got misinformation and old news. n/t