Not looking as good for Bush anymore

In a recent poll put together by Zogby International, Bush is now in negative territory when it comes to job performance, with only 45% of respondents saying that he was performing at a 'good' or 'excellent' level. This should be the test coming up for the conspiracy theorists to see if there's another major attack soon to boost the numbers again.

On a serious note though, I watched the first Democratic debate over the internet (because the Chicago PBS stations aren't broadcasting it until Sunday), and I thought it went pretty well for Howard Dean. I know from reading his blog that many people were sort of upset that he didn't kick-ass as much as they wanted him to, but I think it's important to note that he was on the stage with several other very talented politicians and managed to hold his own. He didn't make any mistakes, and started to reiterate the more centrist message he's been moving towards in his stump speeches.

Besides, this is only the first debate out of many, so in many ways it's just a warmup for when the real media attention happens in the coming months. Also, in a field of 9 candidates it's difficult to build some sort of real presence and repoire with the audience when you get 1/9th of the time. I expect once people start dropping out, the real action will begin, and that's where it will be make or break time for Dr. Dean.

Overall, here's what I thought:

Howard Dean -- Good stuff, not spectacular, but solid. Could use a little more of the energy we saw before in the DNC winter meeting. I understand that it's a transition from needing to get any attention to being more 'presidential,' but don't completely loose all of it, it's what fires up the troops.

Dick Gephart -- Did better than most people I think expected. Has the problem of having given Bush the carte blanche for the war in Iraq, and now is trying to say it was all a big mistake.

John Kerry -- Definitely better than his announcement speech, which I thought was pretty bad. He's a Vietnam war vet, which we heard referenced several times. That's all respectable, but is it a reason to make him president 30 years later? Has the same Iraq issue as Dick Gephart.

John Edwards -- Most disappointing candidate for me. I keep thinking that he's going to be awesome, but instead he's mostly just vacuous. Keeps plugging his 'blue-collar' roots endlessly, as if people will forget than he's a wealthy trial lawyer.

Joe Lieberman -- My god, why does he even bother running? Had the worst Spanish I heard that night, and tried to attack Dean which led to Dean's rebuttal generating much more applause than the attack. Why don't you shoot yourself in your foot some more? Also has a Edwardsish issue with his name -- if you check out his website, it's big JOE, little Liebermann? His last name isn't even on his buttons (or at least the one displayed on the website). I can only surmise that he's trying to minimize the 'hey, I'm Jewish' thing, since I can't think of any other reason that you'd want to lose the last name that virtually everyone knows you by.

Dennis Kucinich -- For all the members of SI out there. To think I had to deal with people like him back in Nova Scotia working with the NDP. Shrill and irritating personified.

Carol Mosley-Braun -- No one expects her to win, but she did put in a classic statement about women's wages that probably no one else would have said.

Bob Graham -- It's somewhat unclear to me why he's running, except perhaps to get enough exposure to be a VP. However, if Howard Dean did win, I wouldn't pick him, I'd pick General Wesley Clark, who's former title 'NATO Supreme Allied Commander' is almost better than 'President of the United States.'