New poll: Democrats have found their candidate for '08
No, it's not Hilary, or Barack, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. The Democrat people would most like to vote for accordng to a new Zogby poll? Jimmy Carter.

Ok to be fair, those others weren't included in the poll. But Carter outpolled Bill Clinton, and John Kerry in an imaginary matchup with W. Kerry was the only person that Bush, no matter how bad he's shown himself to be, still defeats. I wish Al Gore had been in the question. Imaginary matchup results:

George W. 44%
Bill Clinton 46%

George W. 34%
George Bush, Sr. 41%

George W. 20%
Reagan 59%

George W. 42%
Carter 50%

George W. 48%
John Kerry 47%

So, even if Americans are willing to admit that our President makes mistakes, we're not willing to admit that we make mistakes in the ballot box. The same poll found the same respondents had a 40% approval or below of Bush on individual issues of taxes, the war in Iraq, foreign policy, jobs and the economy, Hurricane Katrina, environment, education, social security and medicare, healthcare and gas prices. But, they still wouldn't vote for John Kerry.

One quibble. This isn't the only poll that does this, but Zogby gives respondents 4 choices: Excellent, good, fair, and poor. Then, he counts all fair or poor responses as negative and disapproving. But I don't think of "fair" as necessarily negative, but somewhere in-between. So, maybe these approval polls are generally underestimating support? Why are "fair" and "poor" the 2 negative choices, and not "bad" and "terrible"? I'm sure there's some reason--Zogby's a professional, right? Still, I'd like to know what it is.

Incidentally, www.draftcarter.com doesn't seem to be a registered URL. It's there for the taking if somebody wants to lead the charge.