Wrong Track

This chart should put the wrong track numbers from yesterday's NYT poll (PDF) in some perspective. This is the first read of the year for each year of the Bush administration. The NYT provides data on this question going back to 1983. The pre-Bush high for "wrong track" was 65 percent in November of 1994. We got over 65 in March of 2006 and the public mood has stayed at least that bleak ever since then.

Comments

OK, so -
6/14-18/01 right: 42 wrong:53 dk/na:5
10/25-28/01 right: 61 wrong: 29 dk/na: 10

People are . . . very strange.

Posted by Dan S. | January 15, 2008 12:42 PM

Dan S. - very true. 2002 looks like an indictment of national lunacy. On the other hand, remember that it also charts the collapse of the integrity of the Democratic party to point out the obvious - its betrayal of its constituency. This is what the Clinton-Obama fight about the war is really about. When the only avenue for political action becomes a party (as it shouldn't be, but such has been the massive reaction to the civil rights movements, neighborhood organizing, and other extra-party activities of the sixties), and that party just merges with the establishment, you have a moment in which there is no crowd to hide in - thus, the solitude of those people who said, in 2002, that we were doing the whackiest things ever done by this country.

Well, in both domestic and foreign affairs, we are finally getting the blowback. And of course, in the midst of the Citibank collapsing before our eyes, our president off his meds in the Middle East, Iraq in the usual mind blowing mess - the NYT shows a picture from a hearing in the Congress on whether athletes were using steroids to play ball games.As if it matters on any level whatsoever. Ah, the total disconnect between D.C. and the rest of the country.

Posted by roger | January 15, 2008 1:00 PM

75% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and still no political change. Maybe the Constitution is broken after all.

Posted by mike | January 15, 2008 1:15 PM

Nice graph! The media and the republicans can fool the people for only so long. These numbers will get worse before they get better.

Posted by cheflovesbeer | January 15, 2008 3:44 PM

Switchmans sleeping, train hundred and two is
On the wrong track and headed for you.

Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey jones is ready, watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.

Posted by Njorl | January 15, 2008 4:22 PM

How interesting that we were most on track (or least on the wrong track) in the wake of 9/11.

Posted by Camus | January 15, 2008 8:21 PM

No, I read that graph as showing that 9/11 knocked us off track. The public THOUGHT we were on track after 9/11 with Afghanistan, which was totally wrong. So subsequently things got worse and this is just becoming more and more obvious, even to the moron electorate.

But we STILL have at least thirty to forty percent if not more of the population supporting Bush and the right wing nuts.

The Constitution isn't broken (well, it is and always was, but that's another issue) - it's the electorate that is broken.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 15, 2008 8:54 PM

This looks like something that would appear in The Onion.

Posted by mike | January 16, 2008 5:37 PM