I am just delerious over this USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. (I'm a little late on this one, but it's not like the election is right around the corner.)

Not only is Bush behind by six points (with Nader included) down at 44%--which is pathetic for a sitting president this far out--he's not even carrying the men, the Republican stronghold since Reagan. Kerry has got them by just one point, but Bush needs to cream him there to stand any chance in this thing.

Down down down, Bush is going down down down.

I'm stuck working late tonight, but just grabbed a quick dinner break and read a really fascinating story on Salon (oh subscribe already!)

Declaring a "radio jihad" against President Bush, syndicated morning man Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the White House are shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and one they never saw coming.

The pioneering shock jock, "the man who launched the raunch," as the Los Angeles Times once put it, has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the influence and national reach Stern has. . . .

"He's got one of the biggest audiences in all of radio, and perhaps the most loyal," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the nonpartisan monthly that covers radio's news/talk industry. "And that's why he's so dangerous for the White House." . . .

"Our research shows many, many people in the 30- to 40-year-old range who were Bush supporters are rethinking that position and turning away from Bush because of what Howard Stern has been saying," says Harrison.

Nice to hear someone with a following finally countering all those right-wing whackos on the radio. And here's the best part:

It's that relative absence of political discussion on Stern's show in the past that might make the current anti-Bush barrage more influential. "The fact that his audience does not tune in to him to hear about politics means that he is not just preaching to a choir, in the way that most of the conservative talk-show hosts are doing," says David Barker, author of "Rushed to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion and American Political Behavior." It's an audience, he suggests, that might be more open to persuasion from a broadcaster like Stern.

That's a huge difference. All those Limbaugh dittoheads were going to vote for Bush already. And they're going to vote period. The Stern listeners actually represent a lot of nonvoters and swing voters.

Keep it up Howard. We can use all the help we can get.

I still think this pres is going down down down, bigger than his daddy. But I'm not resting for one minute till it happens.