I'm not sure how much the popularity of someone not on the ballot matters, but Republicans are probably right to worry more about the poll numbers of Mitch Daniels than about President Bush and his Iraq war policies:
In the telephone survey of 800 likely voters, WISH-TV found that nearly a quarter of Hoosiers rated his performance as poor and a third rated him as only fair.
Even among Republican voters, only 58 percent gave Daniels favorable ratings. A whopping 80 percent of Democrats had an unfavorable opinion of the governor.
I have my doubts about Democrats gaining control in Congress, even in the more-vulnerable House; both parties have done a good job of incumbent-protecting gerrymandering. But a Democratic takeover of the Indiana House looks like better than an even bet. The governor has managed to hit a lot of people's hot buttons with things like the toll-road lease, daylight-savings time and BMV upheavals. Each one individually might not be enough to tip the balance, but, in the aggregate, there are a lot of ticked-off voters out there. Putting Pat Bauer in the speaker's chair would be an effective way of limiting the governor's ability to tick them off further for the next two years.
