It seems that my intuition that the Florida is political ground zero was if anything pessimistic. Comes now the Miami Herlad to report on its latest poll finding: Florida voters leaning toward Kerry (by a little).
The whole poll is sort of interesting. The dismal Florida legislature, whose leadership in particular is inept, grasping, and transparently bent on self-aggrandizement, gets low ratings. Alas, the legislative districts are so thoroughly gerrymandered that almost every incumbent faces no meaningful chance of losing his/her seat.
Governor Jeb Bush, whose policies are actually out of step with a majority of the state's voters (e.g. he favors cutting school spending whatever the consequences, they favor spending what it takes for small classes) gets relatively high ratings. Go figure.
I’ve long thought that one of the more annoying tendencies of liberals, was this business of assumig that conservatives obviously agree with liberals about the effects of liberal policies, and oppose them only because they WANT poor people to starve, children to become illiterate, Florida to become an island chain, and so on, ad nauseum. It’s as though the possibility that people might think your policies don’t work the way you expect them to is simply unthinkable.