My friend Chad takes SDP to task on a couple of issues. As usual he does not have sufficient confidence in his own arguments to let them speak for themselves. He has to tell the reader we are "the Thune Blog," and accuse of us "right wing hackery." Actually, I happen to agree with Chad on one point: the Republican fluff over Nancy Pelosi's choice of jet airplanes was much ado about nothing. Moreover, his reply to me is cleverly written and he has a point.
It's pretty rich of Ol' Perfesser Blanchard to compare the poll numbers of President Bush with those of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
He knows we're dealing with two completely different sets of name-id involving a much broader and deeper identification of the President with a much narrower and shallower identification of Nancy Pelosi among the electorate.
I think I read not long ago that Pelosi's name id is actually higher among Republicans than among Democrats because of the GOP's efforts to demonize her in the last election cycle.
It is a fair point that polls about a House Speaker reflect less information than polls about a President. But that doesn't mean that bad poll numbers for Pelosi and Reid don't count. Be honest Chad, if their approval ratings had been high, wouldn't you be comparing them with the President's numbers?
Beyond that, the name identification argument is political spin. The poll allowed a respondent to reply "not sure" whenever they did not know enough about a candidate. Pelosi and Reid have been getting a lot of press attention lately, and a lot of magazine covers. The positive/negative impressions are real.
The truth is that all the Federal leadership, including the White House and both parties on Capitol Hill, are not very popular right now.
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