From Common Dreams
By Ted Rall

When Americans went to the polls on Election Day 2004, nearly 51 percent pulled the lever, punched a chad or touched a screen for George W. Bush. Only 32 percent of the electorate would do the same today. What changed the minds of 23 million people?

It can’t be Iraq. Nothing, after all, has changed. At the beginning of November 2004, we had been there for nearly two years. The Administration, having scoured the country for weapons of mass destruction, came up empty-handed and called off the search. It isn’t as if the tide of battle shifted between 2004 and today. We were losing, and had been losing, since the beginning. Iraqi resistance fighters had already slaughtered more than 1200 American soldiers. The carnage has claimed another 1200 since then; it’s a grim but steady rate.

It can’t be the economy. True, it sucks, but it’s no suckier than it was on Election Day 2004. Bush had already added a staggering $2.5 trillion to the national debt. As is the case for Iraq war casualties, he has continued to dig us deeper ever since–but at no faster a rate.

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