Normally I would agree with you that we should wait and see what happens.  Maybe in 6 months or a year or two years the democrats, and maybe even the republicans, will turn around and agree with censuring Bush.

My problem is that censure is just a very small first step.  First we censure Bush, then we get the country, including many republicans, to see what a horrible president he has been, then we get the country in more fo a mindset to impeach Bush, then we can slowly start spreading the idea that this isn't just Bush alone, but Republicans as a whole, and then we can finally get enough people on board to win a majority in at least one of the houses for the midterm elections.

Now, if each step here took a week, or even a month, we might have a shot there, but if each of these will only work after a long protracted battle of years, then by the time we get the country to agree that Bush deserves censure he will already be long out of office and we will have a new Republican administration and the republicans have an even larger majority.

Things like bans on soft money are always useful, however, censure motions on particular presidents that are already in their second term of office and where the republican party has already started the distancinc process, well, that's pretty fucking useless unless you can do it right away as a build-up to something further.

So, wehn Feingold starts a motion to disband the Republican party as an organized crime syndicate and send all of it's leaders to jail, let me know, until then I'm going to remain very discouraged about thsi whole business, whether or not Feingold can, over the long term, get a motion of censure passed on private citizen Bush.

After the last many years of complete corruption the only thing I feel one needs to understand politics these days it to follow the money trail to powerful interests.

Powerful interests such as the traditional media, which clearly sees bloggers as a potential threat, and has vast amounts of money and influence in politics.

It's not ignorance, it's corruption, pure and simple.  Our current crop of politicians has losty the right to get the benefit of the doubt from me.  Give me extensive records on all of a politicians' meetings, finances, and the same for the major players in traditional media and I might accept that corruption is not what's going on here.

I agree with you, unfortunately it is clear to me that the excuses news organizations give for not doing polls like this are hollow shells to hide the fact they are simply shilling for the Republican party.  AS such, they will not be doing any polls on censure which would almost certainly show that, unless they word the polls in the most obviously and ridiculously biased way imaginable, the country favors censuring Bush at a minimum.

I strongly suspect the media is playing this narrative of more democratic pickups because people do not see government as being competitive anymore, and no one will tune in to watch another round of "Republicans retain control of everything, again".  To counter this the media makes it seem like democrats can get back to being the majority in some places.

This, mind you, is not to say that in this case the narrative isn't actually true.  It may well be that democrats will get a lot of pickups and gain a majority in one of both houses.  I just think that, odd as it sounds, the press has a vested interest in making it seem that way regardless of whther it is true or not.

I think journalists and other media professionals might have noticed a pattern over the last 20 or 30 years where, strangely, those writing stories that help the right get bonuses and promotions whereas those writing less biased stories don't tget these benefits and tend to be the first to go when the companies need to "downsize".

Of course, it's all just one big coincidence, and I'm sure it's not anywhere near 100% correllation, just this interesting pattern.  Probably just random chance, nevertheless...

After all, the Republicans are currently the party in power.  If Bush needs to get things accomplished it may seem like the Republicans will just give it a pass, but they probably won't go with declaring him founder of the Bush dynasty of imperial rule unless he gets enough dirt on them.

Oh, I'm sure he has stuff on the democrats and media too, but I'm bettering he has an awful lot of stuff on the Republicans, and that stuff has got to be incredibly damaging too.

"I, frankly, don't give a damn whether or not you are 'comfortable' answering the question.  Answer it now or go to jail."

Republicans In Name Only and Democrats In Name Only?

I'd like to add another category: RONINs, Republicans, Only NOT In Name.

It looks like for your "55% support 'stay the course', 63% support 'Murtha's plan'" figures you just added together the "all" column's strongly support and support rows.

If this is indeed the case those numbers work out to exactly 53.8% for "stay the course" and 63.3% for "Murtha's plan".  While 63.3% would normally be rounded down to 63%, and 53.8% would be rounded up to 54%, that only gives you 54% for "stay the course" not 55%.

This may seem like minor nitpicking, but there's already enough other factors being fudged in favor of the republicans in little ways.  Normally any poll like this (if it even asked about Murtha's plan, would not describe it but would simply say "Murtha's plan" and trigger the knee jerk "must vote against" reflex among many.  As it stands, I suspect that Republican support for the war would be far lower if they didn't see it as a Republican thing.

Granted, democrats are afflicted by partisan blindness too.  It seems to me though that democrats more often vote against DEmocratic talking points then Republicans do against republican talking points, for whatever reason.