As bad as it seems (con version)

If you're a hardcore Democrat and have been feeling a bit depressed lately, you might want to lock up the razor blades and sleeping pills before you read this piece by David Atkins on generic polling for this year's midterms.  In a nutshell:

• The numbers are the best for republicans in twenty years.
• They lead in the polling 47-43 (i.e., 47% would vote for a Joe Anyrepublican versus 43% who would vote for John Coolguydemocrat).
• President Obama's approval rating is at 44%, and is considerably less than it was in 2010, and if you'll recall, we got our clocks cleaned in the 2010 midterms.
• By a margin of 43 to 39, Americans think the republicans would be better on the economy than Democrats.

By far and away the most disconcerting numbers above are the ones concerning which party would be best for the economy.  Mr. Atkins presciently notes that Democrats in D.C. have spent the last couple of years working on their republican lite chops and allowing previously unheard of cuts to the budget and all that deficit reduction chatter certainly isn't going to fire up the troops.

What makes it even more problematic for me is that we are only five and a half years away from Bush the Lesser leading the charge on utterly destroying our economy, republicans promised jobs in 2010 and have done nothing to help create any, House republicans won't even so much as allow a vote on an unemployment extension, and Senate republicans just blocked a chance to vote on increasing the minimum wage.

What the fuck?

All in all, it's enough to make me wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I quit smoking three years ago.

Peace,
emaycee