Day: January 28, 2008

State of the Union Drinking Game: 2008 Edition

Trish

It’s that time of the year again: time to get wasted while listening to Bush slaughter the words his speech writers so carefully crafted. So here are the rules for this year.

  • Snort one back every time Bush mispronounces anything. Only take a sip when he gets tongue-tied but pulls it out anyway.
  • Kill a full shot every time he blames Congress for the state of the union.
  • Down a shot every time he tells us the economy is doing great but we’re going to prop it up and put it on life support anyway.

After the speech is over, polish off the entire bottle (in the case of beer, complete the six-pack, 12-pack, or suitcase) just because this is the last frickin’ time we’ll ever have to suffer through a SOTU address from this bozo again. The hangover will be well worth it.

Will We Even Bother to Tune In to Bush’s Final SOTU Address?

Buck Banks

miserable-failure.jpgI doubt it, and here’s why:

  • Less than 20 percent of us think the country is headed in the right direction.
  • President Bush’s approval rating is 31 percent, down three points from last month.
  • Four in 10 of us have “very negative” feelings toward the commander in chief, and about 70 percent predict that Bush will go down in history as a worse president than his most recent predecessors.
  • Only 29 percent of us approve of Bush’s handling of the economy, an all-time low for the president on that issue.
  • Only 27 percent give him a passing grade on foreign policy and only 28 percent gave him a passing grade on the Iraq war.

miserable1.jpg

Florida Dems Go to Polls in a Campaign-Less Vacuum – But Over 300,000 Early Votes Have Been Cast So Far

Jon Ponder

The Florida Democratic primary, which wraps up tomorrow, has been a mess from the get-go. The decision to move the primary date up from March, which was apparently proposed by a Democrat and then heavily promoted by the Republicans who control the state, put the Florida Democratic party into a nasty conflict with the national party, which resulted in sanctions against Florida Dems.

“Had Florida sat back and had its primary in March or even in February after Super Tuesday, Florida voters would have been in the catbird seat to determine the nominee.”
– Daniel Smith

The national party has forbidden candidates to campaign in Florida (but fundraising is okay, of course) and the delegates from tomorrow’s winner-take-all election will not be seated at the convention. (The nominee can, and doubtless will, rescind this order, however, if it is to his or her advantage.)

And yet, early voting is well underway among Florida’s 4 million Democrats, and is said to be brisk. Our colleague Trish voted early for John Edwards. She is part of a trend that is a strong indicator of a lot of energy on the left in the state, despite the shenanigans with the calendar:

State party officials are buoyed by the nearly 300,000 ballots cast by early and absentee voters. As of late Wednesday, 170,806 Democrats had cast their ballots at early voting locations, and 125,126 had sent in absentee ballots, according to the Florida Democratic Party.

The American Research Group’s poll yesterday, showed Hillary Clinton leading by 33 percentage points:

Candidate Jan. 26 Jan. 21
Clinton 60 percent 59 percent
Obama 27 percent 21 percent
Edwards 9 percent 14 percent
Undecided 4 percent 5 percent

(Kucinich and Gravel shared a little over 1 percent.)

Here are ARG’s GOP numbers:

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