Posted 8:25 PM by Robert

Comfortable?

One curious side effect of the President being unopposed in his own party is that - except for coverage of the State of the Union address - political news coverage has been mostly dominated in the last couple of weeks by reports of actions and statements of people trying to replace him in the White House. The Man Without Qualities believes that where coverage of one's critics and their speeches dominates the media one is likely to suffer a bit in the polls, which has apparently happened to the President - at least in some polls. Until that balance in coverage corrects itself, it is more interesting than otherwise the case to peruse polls that detect shifts in public sentiment that are not so directly political as the customary polls asking whether a respondent thinks the county is "off track" or the like (although those polls and sentiments are very important). One such poll is tabulated in the ABC News/Money magazine CONSUMER COMFORT INDEX, which has been displaying a rather pronounced trend recently:


End Date.......................................Consumer Comfort Index

1/18/04............................................................ -3
1/11/04............................................................ -7
1/4/04............................................................ -7
12/28/03 ............................................................-9
12/21/03............................................................ -9
12/14/03............................................................ -11
12/7/03............................................................ -11
11/30/03............................................................ -11
11/23/03............................................................ -13
11/16/03............................................................ -17
11/9/03............................................................ -18
11/2/03............................................................ -18
10/26/03............................................................ -18
10/19/03............................................................ -19
10/12/03............................................................ -19
10/5/03............................................................ -20
9/28/03............................................................ -19
9/21/03............................................................ -20
9/14/03............................................................ -19
9/7/03............................................................ -16
8/31/03............................................................ -18
8/24/03............................................................ -17
8/17/03............................................................ -16
8/10/03............................................................ -17
8/3/03............................................................ -17
7/27/03............................................................ -17
7/20/03............................................................ -21
7/13/03............................................................ -21
7/6/03............................................................ -18
6/29/03............................................................ -20
6/22/03............................................................ -18
6/15/03............................................................ -17
6/8/03............................................................ -19
6/1/03............................................................ -19
5/25/03............................................................ -21
5/18/03............................................................ -24
5/11/03............................................................ -24
5/4/03............................................................ -21
4/27/03............................................................ -19
4/20/03............................................................ -15
4/13/03............................................................ -17
4/6/03............................................................ -22
3/30/03............................................................ -26
3/23/03............................................................ -28

This Index is particularly interesting to the Man Without Qulities given the unwavering belief here that the coming election will be dominated by domestic economic issues barring an unforseen and dramatic development on another front.