From Rasmussen:

American voters now trust the Democrats on all ten key electoral issues tracked regularly by Rasmussen Reports. Last month, the GOP’s had an advantage on two issues.

Not surprisingly, the economy is still seen as the most important issue in this year’s presidential campaign--76% of voters say it is a Very Important issue. The Democrats now have a 14-point advantage over the Republicans on this issue, up from eight-points a month ago. Data from the Rasmussen Consumer Index shows that consumer confidence is currently hovering near record lows. Not only is confidence low, three-out-of-four Americans believe that economic conditions are getting worse.

Government Ethics and Corruption is a Very Important issue for 71% of Likely Voters. The Democrats have a huge advantage on this issue—45% now trust them while just 26% prefer the GOP. That lead has also widened since last month, when the Democrats had only a six-point advantage.

Perhaps the biggest surprise comes from the fact that Democrats are now trusted more when it comes to National Security and the War on Terror, an issue long considered a GOP stronghold. The latest polling, however, shows that 49% of voters now trust the Democrats more on this issue while 42% trust the Republicans more. This shift comes at the same time that confidence in the War on Terror has fallen significantly.

This Rasmussen post is chock full of fundamentals... on the war in Iraq, for example:

This month, the Democrats hold an 11-point lead over the Republicans on that issue. Last month, the Democrats led by just two points on that issue. A separate tracking survey has consistently found that six-out-of-ten Americans want troops home from Iraq within a year.

Also, there's more support for the concept that no one wants to be a Republican:

The trust on issues data reflects another significant trend of Election 2008—there is a growing number of people who consider themselves to be Democrats. In fact, the Democrats now have the largest partisan advantage over the Republicans since Rasmussen Reports began tracking this data on a monthly basis nearly six years ago.

Scott Rasmussen notes this may well have  a bigger impact on the congressional than the presidential race. McCain outperforms the Republican party on virtually all the issues, and at this moment in time is trusted more than either Democrat on the economy and Iraq.

Nonetheless, John (100 years in Iraq) McCain has himself a big problem: Americans don't like his party. And, whether McCain likes it or not, he's running as a Republican. Worse than that, on policy, he's running as a Bush Republican. As he tries to thread the needle between running away from Bush and consolidating his base, the intrinsic illogic of McCain's candidacy will come home to roost.

But that's for later. For now, the fundamentals are making Republicans sweat everywhere, from paleo-Republicans like Newt Gingrich to neo-Republicans like Joe Lieberman (whose leverage disappears the day after the election).

This is going to be a rough year on Republicans. Too bad for them.

Cross-posted from AlterNet's blog, PEEK

A few days ago, a Spanish reader made his way through a story about these primary-related gender wars we're fighting, and had a suggestion. "I think you all must go to the shrink," he wrote, "in a kind of collective, nationwide, psychoanalysis."

Some support for that view surfaced this week, as the Institute for Policy Studies released a new report by Miriam Pemberton titled "Military vs. Climate Security." Pemberton found that for each dollar the U.S. government spends on fighting global warming, it throws $88 at the military. It's a stunning -- and telling --ratio, but it's not the whole story; according to the report, "even the modest $7 billion in the federal climate change budget is badly targeted toward what ought to be low priorities, while major climate priorities get short shrift."

Who cares who won the Democratic beauty contest in Florida?  Well, Clinton supporters, of course. What the returns indicate is that if there had been no campaign anywhere in the country, Hillary Clinton would have won easily.  But we knew that. (That's why we have campaigns, and not just polls.)

Here's the worst news:

From the WashPost blog,The Trail:

Early network exit polls out of Florida show the economy is the breakaway issue, with nearly half of GOP voters and more than half of Democrats calling it the nation's top concern...  

Among Republicans:

Top issue: economy 47%, terrorism 19%, immigration 17%, Iraq 13%

Among Democrats:

Top issue: economy 55%, Iraq 25%, health care 17%

Why would that be?