The theory runs like this: people are fed up with President Bush. More importantly, the GOP base is upset with Bush and will stay home while a white-hot anti-Bush sentiment among the Democrats will propel them to victory in November. This is the Democrat hope - indeed, Pelosi and other leading Democrats are already making legislative plans and picking out office furniture based upon the certainty that this theory is correct.

The theory is backed up by a number of national polls about President Bush's job approval, showing it to be just terrible. Most recently, some polling had it that 29% of the American people still support the President. If true, it means that nearly 40% of those who voted for President Bush's re-election in 2004 have turned on him. One commentor on this blog has observed that it is, indeed, a strangely large number of polls - one after another, most showing things worse for the President as compared to the previous polls. Is there any way for us to test the theory prior to election day?

Well, truth be told, we already did - in Ohio. In Ohio, where the GOP has the albatross of the tremendously unpopular Governor Taft 'round its neck, GOP voter intensity was at least as high as any recent election...meaning that whatever the polls might say, the GOP in Ohio is eager for the 2006 fight. But that, of course, was just Republicans talking and voting about Republicans - the Democrats theory hangs, ultimately, on the anti-Bush intensity in their own ranks.

The Connecticut Senatorial primary will be our test case of Democratic anti-Bush intensity. In Connecticut, liberal Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman is running for re-election and has picked up a primary challenger. As James Taranto over at Opinon Journal notes in a profile of the challenger, his prime motivation for running is Lieberman's continued support for the liberation of Iraq - the central crime and failure of the Bush Administration in the eyes of the anti-Bush left. If anti Bush sentiment is as strong as alleged, then in Connecticut we should see a very strong result from Lieberman's challenger.

Next Friday Connecticut Democrats will hold their convention - if 15% of the delegates support the challenger, then he gets a spot on the primary ballot. If the challenger fails to get the 15%, I'll consider the supposed anti-Bush Democratic intensity to be deader'n a doornail. We shall see.

Posted by Mark Noonan at May 15, 2006 03:47 AM

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I'm not so sure that the central crime of Bush is Irag in the eyes of the Democrats - I believe that his crime was beating them into shame and confusion in 2000 -he was hated long before Iraq!
Lieberman is a strong war on terror man because he is a staunch Orthodox Jew -but a typical flexiliberal on whatever need be -witness his instant flip flops when he became Gore's number two man.

Posted by: DL at May 15, 2006 05:48 AM

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