Eight Feet Deep

Today is the day after the first day to early vote in the Texas pri­mary elec­tions. Whoopee.

You notice my lack of an excla­ma­tion point. That is because noth­ing about the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­maries excites me this year. I am curi­ous as to how the Repub­li­can pri­mary will turn out, mainly between Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry and Sen. Kay Bai­ley “the aged cheer­leader” Hutchi­son. Of course, I won’t be vot­ing in that primary.

While this crop of elec­tions are begin­ning to get under way one would think the Gen­eral Elec­tion is next week, or per­haps Judg­ment Day, if you lis­ten to the polit­i­cal and cable news media.

These peo­ple who have to have con­tro­versy for their shows to thrive, who must have con­flict, are like the lit­tle kids sit­ting in the back seat on a vaca­tion trip  scream­ing: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Take, for instance, this poll by CNN. The poll says that 52 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sur­veyed say Obama doesn’t deserve reelec­tion in 2012. Uh, don’t miss the last word in that sen­tence. It says he doesn’t deserve being reelected in 2012. This is, what, Feb­ru­ary 2010?

The president’s job approval has slipped some, the sur­vey says, with 49 per­cent of Amer­i­cans say­ing he is doing a good job and 50 per­cent say­ing he isn’t. What about those who believe he is mostly doing a good job? I’m in that category.

But Barack needs to shape up, or rather, needs to shape up his admin­is­tra­tion. It seems as if Obama was bank­ing on a lot of Amer­i­cans being behind him what with his elec­tion and a Demo­c­ra­tic con­gres­sional major­ity. Lit­tle did he know that the Repub­li­can and oth­ers of the right-leaning have pulled out the stops to build a very effi­cient pro­pa­ganda machine.

It seems that the GOP have found that out­lets such as Fox News work so well at get­ting out their mes­sage that they can use all of the nation’s politically-oriented media to their advan­tage. The Repub­li­cans and those who might tear away from the GOP such as the Tea Partiers have dis­cov­ered that the 24-hour news cycle thrives on con­flict, so the right is fight­ing every­thing that the Democ­rats are try­ing to do. Ta-da! We have conflict!

The sit­u­a­tion for Democ­rats, at least for their Novem­ber elec­tions more than nine months away, looks grim. That is even though, most signs point toward the Democ­rats retain­ing their House major­ity and most likely the one in the Sen­ate. Of course, there is that “throw the bums out thing” that seems to be run­ning pretty strong. The CNN poll says 44 per­cent of reg­is­tered vot­ers do not feel their mem­ber of Con­gress should be returned to office while 51 per­cent would return their con­gres­sional mem­ber. There also have been some con­gres­sional mem­bers, on both sides, say­ing they won’t run for another term. The most recent, and appar­ently most shock­ing, was Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.

But these polls are aver­ages at best. There are all kinds of vari­ables when it comes to vot­ers who elected their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to Con­gress. Also, it can’t be stressed too much that 2012 is a ways away for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Let’s see who would the Repub­li­cans have as their can­di­date as of now? Sarah Palin maybe? Gives me chills! No, I don’t think so.

Are we there yet? No. We are not. We are not even close to elect­ing a pres­i­dent for the next term. That doesn’t mean that Obama shouldn’t make some improve­ments. His first year has been lack­lus­ter in many respects. But that doesn’t mean it has been dis­as­trous. It doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.

Are we there yet. No. We aren’t there. We aren’t even close when it comes to the future in pol­i­tics. We still have miles to travel.  And stop pulling your lit­tle brother’s ear.