So Why are Democrats running behind Republicans in 2008?

Jay Carney, Time:

Could things be any worse for George W. Bush and his beleaguered party? In the new TIME poll, the President's job approval rating continues to wallow near his all-time lows, at 33%, while his disapproval rating breaks the 60% barrier for the third consecutive survey. On Iraq, meanwhile, just 38% of respondents think the U.S. was right to invade, and only 37% believe "the new Iraqi government will be able to build a stable and reasonably Democratic society." Given a choice of policy options going forward, 68% endorse proposals to withdraw most combat troops, either within a year or no later than August 31, 2008, while just 28% say troops should stay in the country "as long as needed until the Iraqis can handle the situation themselves."

And then there's the burgeoning scandal stemming from the Justice Department's dismissal last year of eight U.S. attorneys. Forty-eight percent of respondents say the federal prosecutors were fired because they "refused to be pressured by politics," compared to just 22% who believe they were dismissed "for proper reasons." By a 55-33% margin, Americans believe Bush is refusing to allow top aide Karl Rove and other White House aides to testify under oath "because he's trying to cover up the reasons for the firings" , not because he "wants to preserve the Constitution's separation of powers." A slight plurality, 39-36%, believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign.

So it's taken almost as a given among the professional political class that the 2008 presidential election is the Democrats' to lose. Republicans are so morose in general, and conservatives so unhappy with their current field of candidates, that the assumption of a Democratic advantage has become bi-partisan. And with the public so soured on the Republican in the White House, and so many other trends working against them, including an up-tick in the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats , it's hard to find any good news for Republicans these days. So why, in poll after poll, including the new TIME poll, does that advantage seem to disappear whenever voters are asked to pick a president in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups among front-runners with solid name recognition. In our poll, Hillary Clinton loses to John McCain, 42-48%, and to Rudy Giuliani 41-50%. Even though Clinton maintains a 7% edge over Obama among Democratic respondents, Obama fares better in the general election match-ups. It's so close that it's a statistical dead-heat, but Obama still loses: 43-45% to McCain, 44-45% to Giuliani.

It's hard to know exactly why respondents who are generally unhappy towards — and in many cases fed up with — the GOP might still prefer a Republican for president over a Democrat. Much of it has to do with the individual candidates involved. In Clinton's case, as TIME pollster Mark Schulman points out, "with Hillary the Democratic front-runner, most voters have made up their minds about her, both pro and con. She may have limited upward potential against Republicans. The emerging anti-Hillaries, Obama and Edwards, suffer from low awareness at this point."

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Carney must have been reading PrairiePundit because I have been making that point for months. I can even give him a reason for the results. Since the 2004 election the Democrats have been going wall to wall demonizing President Bush and the Iraq war, as if he were a candidate for reelection. They have been so busy driving up his negatives that they have not noticed that they have been driving up their own at the same time and they have been ignoring the Republicans who are in the race. Then the three leading Republican candidates announce and they concentrate their efforts on the one in third place.

The likely race, should Hillary get the nomination will be one in which she tries to suppress Republican turnout to keep the never vote for Hillary group down. Democrats are very good at this. In the 2006 race they suppressed Republican turnout with a hit job on a gay Republican. They are allowed to do such things, just like their corruption does not count when there is a culture of corruption.