From the liberal Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03 ... z-20100504Excerpted - please go to the link for the full article.
$1:
"We all had a feeling that progress was coming," said Campos, a 49-year-old father of two. "But Chavez's plans have been a debacle and things have only gotten worse."
Campos personifies the disaffection gnawing at the leftist president's base of support: blue-collar workers. It's largely responsible for the slide in Chavez's approval rating to its lowest level in seven years, according to a survey published last month by pollsters Alfredo Keller and Associates of Caracas, the capital.
Chavez's decline in popularity has breathed new life into opposition candidates eyeing September's congressional elections. Although Chavez, now in his 12th year in office, has outmaneuvered them in the past, often by gaming the state machinery in his favor, candidates leveraging the discontent could capture up to half of the National Assembly seats this fall, analysts predict.
Chavistas now have almost complete control of the single-chamber parliament as a result of the opposition's boycott of the last elections in 2005.
Facing voter discontent in the past, Chavez "always rose above it," political scientist Jose Vicente Carrasquero said. In 2003, with polls showing support ebbing as a recall referendum approached, Chavez invented the "missions" — social programs that offered free medical care, discount groceries and adult education to the poor. Simultaneously, a voter registration drive added 2 million voters to his hard-core base, and he easily won the vote.
Now, Chavez seems at a loss as to how to respond, political analyst Ricardo Sucre said, and an increasing number of supporters, suffering from rampant inflation, high crime, scarcities and power outages, are feeling "Chavez fatigue."
"There's a growing sense that the country is deteriorating and that Chavez is out of answers," Sucre said.
It seems the sheen is coming off La Revolucion'.
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