Polls turn south. Is American finally getting it re. GOP policy stupidity?

Condensed from NYT 4/4/08

By DAVID LEONHARDT and MARJORIE CONNELLY
-In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.
-national consensus that the country faces significant problems.
A majority of nearly every demographic and political group —United States is headed in the wrong direction.
-Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.
-The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one..
-Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992,
-two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.
-The unhappiness presents clear risks for Republicans in this year’s elections, given the continued unpopularity of President Bush.
-Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing,.
The poll found that Americans blame government officials for the crisis more than banks or home buyers and other borrowers. Forty percent of respondents said regulators were mostly to blame, while 28 percent named lenders and 14 percent named borrowers.
In assessing responses to the mortgage crisis, Americans favor help for individuals but not for financial institutions. A clear majority said they did not want the government to lend a hand to banks, even if the measures would help limit the depth of a recession.
-Respondents were considerably more open to government help for home owners at risk of foreclosure. Fifty-three percent said they believed the government should help those whose interest rates were rising, while 41 percent said they opposed such a move.
-Almost 30 percent of people in a December poll said that Iraq war was the country’s most pressing problem. About half as many named the economy or jobs.
-issues have switched places in just a few months’ time. In the latest poll, 17 percent named terrorism or the war, while 37 percent named the economy or the job market.
-looking at the current state of their own finances, more than 70 percent said their financial situation was fairly good or very good, a number that has dropped only modestly since 2006.
-many say they are merely managing to stay in place, rather than get ahead, consistent with the income statistics of the past five years, which suggest that median household income has still not returned to the inflation-adjusted peak it hit in 1999.
-Since the 1960s, there has never been an extended economic expansion that ended without setting a new record for household income.
-Fewer than half of parents — 46 percent — said they expected their children to enjoy a better standard of living than they themselves do, down from 56 percent in 2005 with only a third saying they would live better than people do today.