Finally

Maybe Bush's lackadaisical response to disaster, followed by an attempt to "salve the wounds" by taking huge bags of cash and, as they noted on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" over the weekend, dumping them in the levee breach, may be depressing the poll numbers even among Republicans.

And the erosion appears to have been primarily among Republicans -- 63% of whom gave Shrub a grade of good or excellent, down from 71% before the speech. While about half of those polled (including 66% of the liberals) favored Bush's spend-whatever-it-takes-and-more approach, conservatives are divided: 43% approve, only slightly higher than the 37% who oppose.

I'm willing to be a little more generous than Billmon and say that this isn't simply because the heart of a Republican is connected directly to his/her wallet, but rather that conservatives are beginning to exit the cave and, blinking, beginning to make out the fiscal train wreck that the Cheney administration is creating. It has to now be clear to at least the dwindling grown-up wing of the GOP that Republicans in power are not serious about fiscal discipline. After a while, unless they are completely hypocritical, it has to have an effect on how the perceive their elected leadership.

Democrats should not be fearful that they will look hardhearted if they question how Katrina relief, on top of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is going to be paid for. They should stand up every day in Congress and demand that the President and/or House and Senate leadership name one program they would cut that would level a dent on the yawning deficit. They should rail, daily, against the four tax cuts for the richest 1% that the GOP now want to make permanent. That's not hardhearted, it's prudent. And the opposition party has very little left to offer voters than the party's fiscal prudence.

And it's also about time that the Big Dog begin to say as much.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me; the problems of race that were tied to poverty here, and I know you don't think there's any conscious racism at play in the response, but we saw one more time blacks and whites looked at this event through very different eyes. What can President Bush do about that, and looking back, do you think there was anything more you could have done as President?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think we did a good job of disaster management.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the racial divide.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think we did a good job of that. For example, we had the lowest African-American unemployment, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded. We had the highest homeownership, highest business ownership, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.

This is a matter of public policy, and whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the eighties; that's what they've done in this decade.

In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people and benefits to low-income people that helped them move from welfare to work, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works, and we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty, and they got rid of it. And they don't believe in it.

And I don't think that it's race-based, but it has a class impact. And in Louisiana, if what you do affects poor people disproportionately, then, it will disproportionately affect black people. Now, there were a lot of poor people in St. Bernard Parish who were white who were also hurt.

Finally. It may make the invitations to Kennebunkport fewer and farther between, but that's the message that Democrats have to start delivering, and forcefully.