Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

I'll go through this by category. Let's start with:

CORRUPTION. Already a major issue for the Dems, but is it as useful as we think?

First, the good news. In every poll that compared the parties in terms of corruption, respondents said that they thought Republicans were by and large more corrupt than Democrats. This was especially pronounced when the question specified Jack Abramoff's involvement. Nice, huh?

Now, the bad news. The public has very little confidence in Congress overall in terms of corruption. A Pew Research poll revealed that 81% of people thought that corrupt behavior was common in Congress; similarly, a CBS/New York Times poll had 77% saying that this is "the way things work in Congress." In short, the public distrusts everyone; they just distrust us less.

Conclusion: Everyone knows that the Republicans are dirty as hell. There's no need to bring it up too often.

GAS PRICES. This one's just funny. If you need a pick-me-up, click this link. Every poll is in our favor.

A few highlights: A Pew poll from February had only 30% of the public approving of the President's handling of our energy policy, and that's the highest it's been this year. A considerable number of people seem to think that gas prices are high because White House and Congressional Republicans are in bed with big oil. (Gee, where's they get that idea?) And even with prices as high as they are, a slight plurality oppose drilling in ANWR and a majority think the environment is a priority over oil prices.

Conclusion: A really good issue. Unfortunately, Congressional Dems are going to blow this.

IMMIGRATION. The polls on this one are a bit strange, so I apologize if this is confusing.

The polls are all over the map on this issue. The only thing that everyone agrees on is that Bush (or Republicans in general) is doing a bad job on immigration, but what's new? Most Americans think it's an important issue, and have a generally unfavorable reaction toward illegals, though the degree of the negative reaction varies quite a bit from poll to poll.

The most interesting questions are the ones where the pollsters gathered data on what people think we should do about immigration. Despite what conservatives have been saying, most people polled aren't big on the whole big wall/border guard solution (except the FOX poll, but what else would you expect from FOX?). Quite a few people seem to think that corporations are at least partially to blame, and want to punish them for hiring illegals.

Also, no one likes the Minutemen. At all.

Conclusion: Despite conventional wisdom, this is a good issue for Dems, although I don't know how we'd use it.

Finally, IRAN. Kind of the forgotten issue right now, but it'll come up again before November, I assure you.

Here's what you need to realize when looking at the American opinion on Iran: no one wants another Iraq. The polls on Iran reveal this. The public wants to use diplomacy, they don't want to send in ground troops, they think it's more dangerous to act rashly than too late, etc. At the same time, a solid majority in every poll thinks that it's an important issue.

The most important thing to realize when dealing with Iran is that, in this country, we're scared of everything. Pay attention to the wording for the questions. Whenever the pollster indicated that Iran might have nuclear weapons right now, the response leaned toward a more aggressive, militaristic response than it did when the question just mentioned a nuclear program. Again, compare Iraq's "weapons related program activities."

Conclusion: Defuse the issue by drawing connections to Iraq.