Happy Days Aren't Here for Them: The Dems' bind.(Brief Article)

Not since the height of the Gingrich revolution in 1995 have Republicans been as strong as they are now. President Bush has been more popular for more weeks than any president since they started taking presidential-approval polls -- indeed, for longer than his top aides expected at the start of the war. Eighty-five percent of the public approves of the job Bush is doing, with about 60 percent "strongly" approving. People trust him over Democrats not just on foreign policy, but on economic policy. In a number of polls, his popularity is rubbing off on congressional Republicans. So the question on the minds of Republicans and Democrats alike is: Just how long will it last?

Polls come and go, and only a fool would try to predict where they'll be this coming November, let alone in November 2004. But polls are not the only reason for Democrats to worry. And their situation could well get worse.

What drives Democrats crazy is that before September 11, they thought they had the Republicans where they wanted them: playing defense on health care, campaign-finance reform, and the environment. The recession was also bound to hurt the GOP.

When the attacks happened, Democrats were paralyzed -- but only briefly. They quickly settled on the optimistic analysis of the war's effects on politics: It wouldn't have any. Democratic strategists James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum wrote a memo saying that Democrats should support the president on the war while clobbering his party on domestic issues. It was these latter issues that would sway voters in the 2002 elections. And while Bush was popular, the public had "underlying doubts" that would eventually, with Democratic help, resurface. The 2001 elections, in which Republicans lost the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, seemed to confirm this analysis.

Then a curious thing happened. At the very moment when the recession became impossible to ignore and the budget surplus vanished -- the moment when Democrats expected to start scoring points -- Bush moved decisively ahead of them in the polls about whom voters trust on economic and budgetary issues. Voters were willing to trust Bush with their pocketbooks, it turned out, as well as their lives. Nobody's talking about "underlying doubts" any more.

Worse for the Democrats, it turned out that Bush was not going to ignore domestic issues while prosecuting a war -- confounding their hopes that he would repeat his father's mistake. In December, administration officials accused Tom Daschle of blocking the economic- stimulus bill for political reasons; somewhat surprisingly, a narrow majority of the public agreed with that complaint. In January, the president himself got into the fray when Daschle made a speech criticizing Bush's tax cuts. Bush said he wouldn't allow the Democrats to raise taxes by repealing some of his cuts. Several of Daschle's Democratic colleagues, terrified of looking like tax-raisers, sided with Bush. The media, meanwhile, zinged Daschle because he wasn't willing to say he would repeal Bush's tax cuts. Daschle retreated.

Bush keeps coming out with new initiatives: One day it's ...