Time Magazine: "Bush Battens Down the Hatches"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.time.com/time/election2004/article/0,18471,579728,00.html?cnn=yes

A couple of choice gems from writer Matthew Cooper:

"Bush isn't a great communicator, but he is a slick one. He was wise enough to skip the whole mission-to-Mars proposal and adroit enough to talk through the whole marriage thing without using the word gay but invoking Bill Clinton by name."

"Democrats need a narrative to explain why Bush is faltering and how they'd do better. They're not there yet. But they may be by November."

The sub-header of the article is "In his State of the Union speech the President gets ready for the election and plays to his base."

[radfringe]

1. 3 co-workers came up to me yesterday (seperately)

they are not all that involved or interested in politics, and have never approached me before regarding any political issue

they all asked what I thought about Kerry winning Iowa and what I thought about the SOTU

I told them Iowa was only the beginning of the run-off to the nomination, and it's still a horse race. I was asked who I favored - told them I hadn't made up my mind completely, and that I'm still watching Dean, Kerry, Clark and Edwards

Unfortunately, I had taken some cold medicine and zonked out an hour before SOTU, so didn't watch it, but I had read the transcript the following morning

I told them that in my opinion it wasn't a state of the union address, it was bush*'s campaign speech. They nodded and said that is what they thought and two of them had flipped to different channels 5-10 minutes into the speech, the third said he watched about half of it

overall, they all indicated that they had no intention of voting for bush* and all he was doing was screwing the country for his own and his buddies' benefit

one co-worker admitted that he isn't registered to vote, didn't know how to go about it - before I could answer, another co-worker told him that he would take him to the townhall after work and get him 'signed-up'

it's interesting to note just how many people that have previously had no interest in elections or politics are now paying more attention. Don't know about you, but I can't recall this level of anger/concern/interest ever being this high going into a presidential election --- and the "theme" being to get rid of a sitting pResident