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We voters just can't make up our minds. One day it's Rudy. Then Huck. Hillary. Then Obama. Then Hillary again. Hey, here's McCain, risen from the political dead!
Certainly one reason we can't decide is because no one candidate fulfills all of our hopes and dreams. One has experience (sort of). Another has charisma. One speaks of conservative values but has other issues. Another champions those same values but is a . . . Mormon. Some say the only African-American candidate isn't black enough, or the only woman candidate not womanly enough. They're like the old commercial . . . everything you always wanted in a candidate - and less.
Another reason for voters' fickleness is the economy. If you're not covered at work, private health insurance is unaffordable for all but the wealthy. Gas and milk cost three bucks a gallon. Economic growth appears to be stagnating, and the growing mortgage crisis is hammering the real estate market and home values. Big-screen TVs and other luxury items aside, according to The Two-Income Trap, it generally takes two incomes to match the standard of living that one income provided a generation ago, and many people feel they are in danger of slipping from the ranks of the middle class.
Americans' priorities are also in flux early into the primary season. The survey found voters to be in their darkest mood about the economy in 18 years, by some measures; 62 percent said they believed that the economy was getting worse, the highest percentage since the run-up to the recession in 1990. Seventy-five percent said they believed that the country had "seriously gotten off on the wrong track," also similar to levels in the early 1990s, when such discontent fueled the presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton. Worries about the economy now dominate the voters' agenda, even more so than the war in Iraq, which framed the early part of this campaign. While change has emerged as an abstract rallying cry in the campaign debate, what the voters mean when they talk ...
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