Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Today's political lesson concerns the old adage that in politics, a few months can be a lifetime. When California treasurer Phil Angelides announced this winter that he would challenge Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, I thought, like many other Democrats, "well, good that he's doing it, but yikes. Good luck."

Oh, how things can change. A new Field Poll shows that both Angelides and state comptroller Steve Westly are now ahead of Schwarzenegger, by four points each. Schwarzenegger's reelect stands at 39%, an atrocious number by any standard and worse for a governor once so popular that people were trying to rewrite the Constitution so that he could be president. Now granted, this election still has 16 months of change to go, but who ever would have guessed we'd be here now?

In a similar vein, you may have heard that President Bush's approval ratings these days is around 42 or 43 percent. Sure, that's bad, but I just found an American Research Group poll showing Bush's approval/disapproval among independents is an astonishing 17/75. That's right: only 17% of independent voters approve of the job Bush is doing. These numbers are worse than Schwarzenegger's, and it's yet another reminder of the difference in coverage of Bush and Clinton. Does anyone doubt that a Clinton with a 42% approval rating would be pelted with "failed presidency" coverage? In any case, this much is true: George W. Bush is an unpopular president.

Hopefully on the increasingly popular side of the ledger, the DNC just relaunched their website. I really like it. The old version just screamed, "hey look, we're diversity!" This one is a lot more snazzy. If you're into this kind of thing, I'd highly recommend a look.

Okay, one last note: you may have heard that the FEC has proposed limiting bloggers' political conversation and contributions the way they do for radio, TV and print. Here's a hilarious post that I think about sums it all up.