OneMan catches the first hint at how bad the Blagorgeous is doing with the public.
The Trib poll is out and it has his job approval at 40 %.
That’s down from 55 % in February. Sort of similar to some other guy’s approval ratings.
The real problem at this point is for the Party-and I mean the Democratic Party. As far as I’m concerned any Democrat in tough race who doesn’t attack him is committing suicide so fire at will. That goes for Obama too. There is nothing that he has done that deserves loyalty or for that matter, he hasn’t done anything demonstrating his commitment to Democratic values. Instead he has acted like a petulant child and unless he starts making amends, he should be challenged. I’ll chip in for air fare to bring back Vallas.
That said, he’s going to lose in the showdown. Fighting a Lege takes discipline–you have to stay on message, find three of four clear targets where they are wrong and then beat it to death. The Blagorgeous can’t do that.
1) He doesn’t have the attention span
2) Madigan and Watson’s ploy of a zero growth budget means everyone gets the same they did the year before. No cuts–no targets.
Whether he realizes it or not, The Blagorgeous has lost this fight. He needs to reorganize as Clinton did in 1994 and go to Springfield and mend fences with Democrats. After that, he needs to go to Tom Cross and then finally to Tom Watson. Or he can simply plan on being ousted in the next primary.
This also means we’ll have Senate and Presidential numbers over the weekend. Any Trib employees are welcome to send me the raw numbers. 😉 And I won’t release them until the Trib is out–I just want to start analysing. archpundit@yahoo.com.
Word here is that, on top of the bad Trib numbers, the four tops – sans Blago — met in Frank Watson’s office yesterday informally. The result was an agreement to begin working cooperatively on a “zero-growth plus” budget with the goal of acheiving a veto proof majority on the budget by Monday. See today’s Captiol Fax (subscrip req) for more details.
The key is Jones — who has a foot planted in both camps. However, given the Trib numbers, it seems unlikely that Jones makes his stand there.
Unless The Governor pulls a serious rabbit out of his hat, he could be heading towards a seriously embarrassing defeat
As always–good stuff! Thanks.