Flurry of Polls: Good News for Edwards, Guiliani

Today is poll day, as new polls from ABC/Washington Post, NBC/Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg/LA Times plumb the depths of Americans' views on the War in Iraq, Bush's still declining approval ratings and the early, early show on the '08 presidential primaries.

We won't dwell too long on Iraq: it's pretty obvious from all the polls that Americans are completely fed up with the war and they don't trust the fellow--President Bush--who screwed up everything in the first place to somehow turn it around. Resoundingly, they want our troops home, the sooner, the better.

Iraq could continue to be an albatross for all Republican office holders, not just the President, which explains why folks like GOP Senator Gordon Smith from moderate Oregon, hearing from their constituents, are abandoning ship.

As for the President's approval ratings, they're just about as low as they could go absent a sex scandal. And for good reason--these polls were taken in the days after the President politely received the Iraq Study Group report and promptly signalled, mostly by body language, that he wasn't too interested in the ISG's primary recommendations.

But none of that is really new. What is interesting are the poll numbers on the '08 presidential election, which, let's face it, will be a dominant topic of news coverage for the next 22 months whether we like it or not.

On the GOP side, the news is good for Guiliani and bad for McCain. Every poll is now consistently showing Guiliani ahead of McCain among Republican voters, with Rudy G. expanding a small lead he'd had in a couple polls before the November elections. Despite Bob Novak's prediction today that "McCain Inc." will be hard to beat because Republicans don't like internecine fights and therefore prefer to crown their nominees by implied consensus, we expect a bloody, hard fought battle on the GOP side.

Indeed, the Republicans could use a good airing out of differences in the party after getting thumped in November. McCain's problem is that a lot of party conservatives are still pissed off at him for all kinds of things, and these are folks who don't easily forgive and forget. Despite Guiliani's more unconventional stands on some important social issues, he hasn't done much to make anyone in the party mad at him.

The biggest thing Guiliani has going for him: the aura of competence. Most Republicans will tell you, at least in private, that they are sorely disappointed in George W. Bush because he's turned out to be just darned incompetent. They don't want to make that mistake again. Some pundits will say that the polls don't really reflect the tenor of the party activists most likely to vote in the primaries, but we discount that view. Many of the Republican primaries are also open to independents, who adore Guiliani.

And the bad news for McCain--his efforts to woo conservatives, which don't appear to be working, have clearly lost him much of his former independent base--the ABC/Post poll reports that McCain has dropped 15 percentage points in favorability ratings among independents since March.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney seems poised as a possible alternative if McCain and Guiliani beat each other up so badly that voters want someone else. But, Romney's past support for gay rights has been much more vocal than Guiliani's, and many voters voice suspicion of his mormon faith. We think Romney has the time and charisma to overcome both those challenges.

Now, to the Democrats. The candidate we think is sitting pretty is former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. It appears that Edwards, who polls third among Democrats, in the low double digits, has benefitted from former Virginia Governor Mark Warner's decision not to run. Edwards certainly gets a boost from the NBC/WSJ finding that he--unlike either Hillary or Barack--beats McCain in a head-to-head race due to strong support from independents. (We have long believed that one of the many ways Kerry blew the '04 election was by not turning Edwards loose to campaign in a number of more conservative swing states.)

Hillary, of course, continues to lead the field, and she's also got a big lead in money and organization. If she were a Republican with all those advantages, she would get the nomination for the reasons outlined by Bob Novak. But Democrats are more contentious and, more importantly, desperate for a win. Hillary's high negatives continue to worry many party activists.

While that obviously leaves the door open for Senator Barack Obama, we have to wonder how long the Obama media lovefest will last. Pretty soon Hillary's forces will start going after him, and his proxies will then go after her, which is more likely to tarnish Obama than Hillary's attacks. He'll look like just another politician then. We won't rule out a Kennedy-esque groundswell for Obama that propels him to the nomination, but for now we're skeptical.

That's why Edwards looks so good. He can spend the next year rising above the fray and playing non-politician, hoping to burnish his credentials with independents to prove that he, and not Hillary or Barack, is the one who can actually win. Whether that would work in a race against Rudy G., we don't know--he's also very popular among independents.

We note that Gore scores about 10% in the polls--if Gore doesn't run (and we hope he doesn't), we think it will help Edwards most, especially if Edwards is smart enough to jump on the green bandwagon. We think Americans overwhelmingly favor a more active government approach on energy and the environment, and the NBC/WSJ poll backs us up: 80% favor forcing more fuel efficient cars even if it costs more, and 59% favor eliminating tax breaks for oil companies.

So, who will be the next President? Sorry, we're not ready to make that bold prediction. We'd be the first to say it could easily be someone whose name is not even mentioned above. There's still a long way to go.