Angry, Angry Hippos

I am perversely fascinated by this New Scripps/ Howard poll:

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be.

Its not often that the general American Left goes off the deep end en masse, this being, I hope, a rare example. (The only thing to give me pause was a guy I know who was in the British SAS for many years who was calmly certain that the attacks were an orchestrated conspiracy involving the Bush administration. The theory may be crackers with cheese on top, although the SAS guy was well-educated and disarmingly thoughtful. But you can't really go off on conspiracy tangents from guys you know, you know. )

But what it does suggest is that there is a profound disengagement of a large segment of the populace from the polity, which the DC Centrists (again, as opposed to moderates) in the Democratic party simply can't see and are unable to either influence or take strength from.

More than a third of American voters believe there was a 9/11 Bush conspiracy? Look at it another way: understandably susceptible to total cynicism, and therefore a bit deluded, this an unused leftist power base that alone outnumbers "strong approvals" of Bush (about 20%). (Strong disapprovals are around 39, 40%). Forgetting the conspiracy for the moment- there is huge potential power base here, that the MSM has got us believing does not exist. This is considerably larger than self-described and more thoroughly-deluded evangelicals, for example.

On a related note, Lieberman is about to lose the primary, and my bet is that he'll lose the general. His actions in recent days disqualify him from being the Democratic nominee - his willingness to betray the party election process, his extreme self-regard, his condescension to critics. It's more than the war - he's embraced everything around the Patriot Act, the gutting of the Constitution and the concentration of executive power. I am reminded of a punk rock rant from years ago: "these are the kind of people that, when the Gestapo comes for you, offer to water your plants while you're away."

The danger to the party is absurdly overstated. I have little patience for the elite whining about a primary - service is a privilege, and if you forget that, out with you.