Should Democrats be Mean to President Bush?

This is a tough question. I don't know about the moral side of it, I'll deal with that later. Let's just look at the political side of it, or even better, let's look at what Salon has to say about it.

"As long as the nomination remains undecided, all the contenders, including Edwards, will keep trying to "get Democrats on their feet cheering." Party activists have been applauding attacks on Bush and screaming for more. "Bush gets Democratic base voters very angry -- more even than Reagan," declares Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. That's because Bush ran as a moderate "compassionate conservative," won a disputed election, and proceeded to govern as a confrontational conservative, with three consecutive top-bracket tax cuts and a new doctrine of preemptive war. Also, if the Democrats are an uneasy coalition of the underpaid working class and the overpaid meritocracy, Bush seems genetically engineered to offend them all: a president's son who, by his own admission, stumbled through life until age 40, after which he acquired a baseball team, a governorship, the presidency, and an aura of unearned entitlement.

With nine contenders competing for the favor of any angry party membership in a primary season that's starting sooner and probably ending earlier than ever before, Bush bashing is smart politics. But is it the ticket to beating a sitting president who is most comfortable casting himself as an ordinary guy beset by overly aggressive adversaries, from Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who called him "Shrub" in 1994, to Vice President Al Gore, who hovered over him during their debates in 2000?"

Well, there it is. Nobody questions that playing to the base is the way to win primaries, and then you move to the center for the election. Since President Bush will face no serious threat during the Primary Season, he can position himself early as a centrist, and so capture the undecided vote. But what if, as some have suggested, the base is the key to Election 2004?

I took a poll on two message boards and collected a whopping 49 opinions. Of those 49 participants, 18.37% accept the proposition that the Base will decide the election. 81.63% voted the opposite way. This suggests that I have too much time on my hands. What do you think?