Red America

If you know me, you know that I always try to shy away from politics. I just want people to get along and be happy! Except for people who like anything Bush has ever done.

In any event, there's been quite a bit of comment over the past day or two about the fact that the Washington Post has decided to balance their liberal columnists Charles Krauthammer and George Will with someone more conservative, a 24-year-old punk who should be signing up to fight for his beliefs in Iraq instead of being paid for his malformed opinions. He's been at it for two installments now; yesterday he talked about how Democratic ideas and hyperbole are so unpopular that "the floor may be nonexistent." Today he mocked the "ridiculous hyperbole" of liberal commenters.

If you want to see what a "nonexistent floor" really looks like, you might want to check here: the frequently updated digest of polls, showing Bush's approval/disapproval spread. If there's a floor over the past five years, Bush hasn't found it yet. It's like the game of CandyLand we used to play when I was a kid. My sister would stack the deck so that she immediately got to climb the big Tootsie Roll to get to the top, while the rest of us would strategically be placed on the icing flumes any time we got past the first ten squares.

The next time you hear that the left isn't popular, or that people like Bush, or that the Democrats aren't running on any platform but being anti-Republican, just remember that it only becomes true if you act like it is. The truth is that left-of-center views are still a majority in this country when put to question. No one likes Bush - he's extremely unpopular, and opposing him is not a risk to your livelihood the way it might have been in 2002. And if you can actually enumerate the Republican "platform" for 2006, I'd like to hear it.