Predict the results of the 2004 US Presidential Election

So Bush.

However, Bush has a lot on his side now, with his 9/11 leadership (I actually think he did a good job with handling the traumatic period shortly thereafter and even in some respects Afghanistan...some, not all). However, he fucked up the war and spread our resources too thin and alienated some of our allies and he's (unintentionally, but still) all but endorsing the stigma that same sex coupling has in our society.

Kerry doesn't seem like a "let's rally around him!" kind of candidate, and maybe he's peaked early. It's tough to say what could occur. It's a long ways until November. I'm going to say that the results will be very very close and that it will be.....fuck I really don't know.

i really don't agree with the "clinton hurt gore in 2000" argument, if anything gore's attempts to DISTANCE himself from clinton throughout the campaign were what hurt him.

Johnson ('64) - 73% - Won with 61%
Eisenhower ('56) - 72% - Won with 57%
Reagan ('84) - 56% - Won with 59%
Clinton ('96) - 56% - Won with 49% (10% third-party)
Nixon ('72) - 56% - Won with 61%
Ford ('76) - 49% - Lost with 48%
Truman ('48) - 48% - Won with 49.5% (5% third-party incl Thurmond)
Bush ('92) - 41% - Lost with 37.5%
Carter ('80) - 38% - Lost with 41%

Average of nearly 30 recorded 2004 Bush Approval ratings thus far - 50.9%. The trend is down.

Kerry 1, Bush 0

When the first pres. Bush got in a scandal involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) an investigation was called for. Eventually there was one by a sub-committee of the Senate Foreign Relations headed up by none other than Kerry. The investigation floundered and nothing came of it.

Source: Rule By Secrecy by Jim Marrs, great book that traces and links various conspiracies back to the beginning of human existence (I won't spoil the end for you).

Well, for one calling the book non-fiction is a strech.

I'lll just tell you all, if you haven't already read Sitchin, human beings were created by reptile aliens called the Anunnaki. They spliced their DNA w/simple ape-like people so that we might beter mine the gold they so desperately needed to protect them from their severly damaged ozone layer.

The elections being computed = Bush 130,000,000, Kerry 0

I refuse to accept the results of any computer voting states regardless of outcome, due to all the backdoor shit going on with that. If you want to read up about REAL conspiracies, just get more informed about that whole situation. It just makes my blood boil.

Is this the end of the republic, as Gore Vidal has asserted for so many years now?

But anyway, sticking to this thread's topic, I predict that whoever the winner of the 2004 race is, they will secretly be an Illuminati/Mason/Reptilian Alien, or perhaps even a member of the dreaded Sembellonati. Dear lord, I fear I have said too much...*choking noises*

Ha. Your quality predictions are based on up-to-the-minute information! It's Attorney General Ken Salazar who is going to win in CO for the Democrats; Udall has withdrawn.

To address the Dole comparison, even though it's facially ridiculous - Dole didn't lose because he was a bore, he lost because the country approved of Clinton's performance, and Dole was too old. Today, the public feels the country is moving in the wrong direction, and there is no age gap between the candidates. In '96, Bob Dole was 73 years old. Clinton was 50 - a gap of 23 years. Bush is 58, and Kerry is 61. And age isn't really the issue - it's connection to young, or younger, people. Kerry pretty plainly gets youth culture better than Bush does. And he's favored by the slightly older investor class.

and i hope they tell kerry there is no such thing as a social security trust fund

They don't have to. Kerry presumably knows that the "Social Security Crisis" is a myth.

I'm going to be pessimistic and say Bush.
I don't like it, but I've grown to accept it.

In the meantime, lemme deal with this point:
Dole didn't lose because he was a bore, he lost because the country approved of Clinton's performance, and Dole was too old.
Dole actually lost for the same reason Gore lost*; He's arrogant, joyless and stiff**; Dole and Gore gave people the creeps.

* = Lets overlook the whole Florida thing for a sec, and just focus on why people that disliked Gore didn't vote for Gore.
** = No viagra jokes, please.

Which is another are where Kerry hurts - no one's excited about him. There's nothing to get excited about.

xpost - Popular vote totals remain fun to discuss but irrelevant. A Democrat can't coast on the extra half-million Californians who like him, just like Bush can't coast on the extra 10% of Texans who'll vote for him.

just as they were intended to. score at least one (or now two really) for international terrorism (and whichever "network"). i do not think this sort of tactic would jibe with collective american psyche in nearly as facile a manner, successfully executed attack or not. this is the fortuitously inconvenient irony of our american 'stupidity.' also i personally hope that blair is not next. and it is certainly more likely that bush would lose (though still not likely, post-edwards) in an untainted-by-recent-attack climate, than god forbid anything else.

http://www.gristmagazine.com/images/maindish/kerry_windsurf.jpg

That's what every election is about. You have to have buzz. You have to have your party loyalists willing to be out there fighting for you, convincing people why you should be President.

No one cares about Kerry.

Kerry has to convince people that they should go ahead and vote, that he stands a chance. People are cynical, depressed and tired. With Florida '00 and the computer voting and so on, a lot of people think it's a fool's errand to start with - the election has been pre-determined. You've got to have energy and charisma to convince people to work for you, to get out the vote.

Kerry doesn't have it.

"Now you want to scale back the war on terror?!!?! It's UNPATRIOTIC to criticize the President!!!", new and improved PATRIOT Act that allows for the detention of any Democrat who might have criticized the war in Iraq (Kerry's safe!), etc. etc. etc.

This is interesting. Some will have you believe people are riled up and that a lot more people are going to come out this time. I don't know. Either way I think Kerry is too unattractive to win the presidency and so he will loose.

a) who cares, no more bombs pls thks!
b) like 9/11 only affected new yorkers?

So, yeah, to some degree 9/11 only affected NYers - it was the exploitation of the aftermath that has affected me, and those are totally separate things.

Kerry + HoF-er + good edge control + old-fashioned wood stick = my candidate of choice.

The personal is political, I guess

But even if I knew a few people (and I probably know people who've moved there that I'm unaware of), that still wouldn't constitute any great connection to the region for me.

It disturbs me greatly that 3,000 people died - but just as many died in the US bombing of Afghanistan, just as many died in the attack on Iraq, thousands more die every day. It wasn't a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions. It wasn't a world-altering tragedy or anything of the sort.

The only difference from hundreds, maybe thousands, of similar occurrences was that it happened to 'us' instead of 'them,' and I don't count myself as part of that 'us.'

All I've said boils down to that last statement. Anything else you want to attribute to me - not caring, whatever - is a product of your own mind.

About that 'point'?

You said something about a point? Or were you going to enlighten me with the proper response to 9/11?

If you spent as much time working for change as you do bitching about how the two-party system doesn't represent you on ILX, Texas would be the most radical state in the Union.

What's so hard about that sentence? Can you not figure out that I never accused you of anything, or even attributed any sort of belief or motive to you?

If you spent as much time working for change as you do bitching about how the two-party system doesn't represent you on ILX, Texas would be the most radical state in the Union.
Nice non-sequitur, but since I've commented on Kerry and his chances, and then on 9/11 here (with nary a mention of the failings of the Democratic party in general, third parties or anything else), I'm not sure why you want to bring up my dissatisfaction with the two-party system. (Not entirely true, I know exactly why you bring it up - dodge! dodge! - but it's still a non-sequitur.)

Back to the other questions though - you said something about a point? And you were going to enlighten me as to the proper response to tragedy? I was looking forward to those.

Let's change New York City to Austin or wherever you live in Texas, just for giggles.

You'd still feel the same?

x-post to db - how 'bout Oklahoma City, maybe?

As to the first post - of course I'd have a greater emotional response to an attack on Dallas or Austin. (Nor would I expect NYers feelings to remain the same.) Something that hits close to home is going to have a greater impact.

But my emotional response wouldn't change anything - it still wouldn't be an unprecedented or historical tragedy. It still wouldn't be a world-changing event or truly affect the rest of America. It still wouldn't be a greater tragedy

(In case it's at question, I've never said that anyone - outside of the 'kill em all' crowd - had a wrong response to 9/11. Only that I didn't share it)

(hstencil - if you think I've claimed moral superiority here, you're completely misguided or fishing for arguments. There is no moral superiority at stake.)

Can it be that you are cynical, depressed and tired? You don't care. We get it. But you don't have to care. It's kind of that your rhetoric tends toward declarations of general cynicism and apathy, while this just might be the result of seeing the world through your own affective filter. The trouble with this is that since I'm very interested in politics I see it as a matter of ethics, to encourage others to participate, because otherwise.. the whole system breaks down. Perhaps a way of looking at it might be, your feelings don't matter at all here, but your responsibilities do.

Where I lose you is at the rest - of course people should care and take part in some way. But what I'm seeing is that people are cynical about how elections are run, depressed at the aura of inevitability around Bush (cf. the polls that show a majority would vote for Kerry, but a larger majority think Bush will win) and tired of not having real choices. None of these are areas where Kerry helps himself.

Record-low turnouts for the DNC primaries, people who were excited about the campaign (Dean's supporters, Clark's) have faded away. Nader's polling at 3-6%, which is an absolute miracle after 2000. (Even if he only gets 2% in the election, I figured Nader would be like Buchanan in 2000 - .25% nationally if he's lucky) It's just not shaping up to be a good year for the Democrats.

I see vast swaths of people that can't wait to vote for or against Bush, and are energinzed by those prospects. Perhaps the people you see are not most people?

tired of not having real choices

I absolutely think that I have a real, nay a stark, choice. Most people feel the same.

Record-low turnouts for the DNC primaries,

uh, no. When there was any question about who was going to win, there were record HIGH turnouts for the primaries. The record lows showed up when everything became a foregone conclusion - there's no reason to vote when Kerry has the nomination mathematically locked up.

There is a reason to vote - to support the candidate, to show some excitement. There were high numbers - when it was a contested race. And when it became Kerry... all that faded away. The interest in the process dropped - and that's bad for November. People being excited by the candidate means down-ticket support (cf. Nader helping Democrats overall).

Kerry has a weak lead against Bush at the lowest point of Bush's tenure, before the unleashing of the Bush war chest, before anyone really knows who or what he is.

xp Edwards wasn't contesting Cali. The primary was pretty much over by then.

A bad economic record didn't doom Reagan in '84, he focused on the Evil Empire. Bush is going to play the terrorism card left and right, and a majority still give him the lead on terror, Iraq, an exit strategy for Iraq and foreign policy in general.

And if the economy starts to show signs of life at all, Kerry's going to be in even more truble.

Kerry -

John Kerry has a plan to rebuild our future. What’s needed now is leadership – to finish the job in Iraq the right way – because America can and must do better. John Kerry believes that your family’s health is just as important as any politician's in Washington. America’s homeland security needs to take steps as big as the threats we face. We need a president who will roll up his sleeves and get things done for America’s schools. Americans deserve a principled foreign policy.

Bush -

The President believes that as Americans, we have responsibilities. President Bush’s comprehensive health care agenda improves health security for all Americans by building on the best features of American health care. President Bush promised to make educating every child his top domestic priority. The President’s most important job is to protect and defend the American homeland. Defending our nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the federal government. President Bush believes that good stewardship of the environment is not just a personal responsibility, it is a public value.

I dunno. There's lots of motivation, but it's all among the people who are normally motivated during election time. I don't see Kerry and the democrats really getting people into the voting booth and I don't see Bush getting one-issue republicans (who only vote economy, immigration, or "family values") out to vote either. Barring some sort of disaster, campaign meltdown, or whatever, i see turnout being low and a slight edge going to Bush.

I'll take that bet.

Rather than tell people it's their duty or responsibility (it is neither) to vote for the 'puppet on the left or the puppet on the right' or to cast a meaningless protest vote, why not, I dunno, find some candidates who convince people that maybe politicians aren't evil incarnate, who might have their best interests at heart and might do something useful for a change? You're never going to inspire confidence in or engagement with the political process by shaming people into voting. You've got to give them a reason to care. A reason to think that their vote means something.

Ultimately, that might be the worst result of an unlikely Kerry victory. As with Clinton, we'll hear that centrist, corporate-sponsored whiteboy politics are the only way for Democrats win, and the same people will run the show, the same people will sell out the interests of working people, minorities, and non-whites across the globe. The country as a whole will just slide deeper into a state of contented apathy.

I've voted in every election I could until last Tuesday (oops), not once have I voted for a winner. At this point, I think I have more respect for people who just disengage completely, rather than cast a 'Mickey Mouse' vote. That's more honest, isn't it? Not voting is registering your dissatisfaction with the candidates, in the best way you can (until a "none of the above" option appears on our ballots). Thing is, if you don't have a couple million in the bank, the candidates don't have to care.

I 'get' it, I just disagree with the premise.

Attacking the end-result (not voting) but ignoring why people don't vote is counterproductive.

Oh, wait, this is this the "you want the perfect candidate who blah blah blah" speech? That BS is a joke, just used to limit the parameters of political discussion. As long as anyone looking for a real alternative to the DLC can be labelled a kook (or apparently a fascist! - even better), then establishment Democrats don't have to worry.

that's why i say that you want a führer.

What about the 52% who don't vote? Why aren't they voting? Isn't that an important question?

What does it even mean that I'm looking to "foist such candidates on them"? That's beyond meaningless - I haven't said a word about pushing anyone on the people. I haven't said anything about a preferred candidate. You're just making this up now - WTF?

Tell you what, why don't you find anywhere that I've suggested "foisting" anyone on people against their will. Maybe you can find out my "preferred candidates" are while you're at it? What the hell are you even talking about?

(Once more 'my candidate' is dead - Paul Wellstone, who didn't share that many of my actual policy beliefs. I voted for Nader simply to aim for 5% in 2000 and have no intention of voting for him in Nov.. If I vote.)

(x-post)Why do advocates of the two-party monopoly always point to the worst-case examples? (Though Israel has managed to survive it's 'awful' multi-party system even in the midst of constant threat.) (And shit, compared to the apparent Italian alternatives I'll take wacky rotate-a-govt.)

Why not Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Great Britain or any other nation with a fine, thriving, multi-party system? Each has two (or three) 'major parties' - but many smaller parties who also get to actually take part in the process. It's not that your 'minor party' has to have a majority - even one or two seats, or a place at the coalition table can make a difference.

Why is everyone attacking milo here? I haven't seen him stating he'd like to 'foist' candidates on anyone or 'jerry-rig' the system. It doesn't do anyone any good to build up and tear down straw men.

Christ, why shouldn't everyone be cynical w/the system we have? Cynicism is something people from all walks of ideology should be able to agree on. Then, ideally, we should all do something about it (btw ingaging in dialogue is doing something, probably accomplishes more than voting).

I think the voting 'problem' re: donut is a lot more complicated than just rally the troops and getting the vote out. There is a very substantial number of people who are entirely divorced from politics and if they did vote would be doing so arbitrarily. What is so important about getting people out to vote? How does that change any structural deficiencies within the system? Aren't their underlying problems that we should be looking at instead?

(Or we could just cut the US into quarters/eighths?)

Then I thought "oh, hey, advocating ethnic-based parties maybe not so brilliant."

find some candidates who convince people that maybe politicians aren't evil incarnate, who might have their best interests at heart and might do something useful for a change?

Goodness. Sometimes I hardly know what to say. What can you say to that? Well.. I think a lot of people involved in politics generally try to do what they consider to be the right thing. Not all. I guess you'd have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis, and everybody's fallible. But the comment is telling - what exactly is evil about politicians qua politicians? Is it the very nature of politics itself - compromise, strategy, diplomacy, a field in which saying all of what's on your mind and maintaining strict ideological purity at all costs is often a liability - does that upset you on some moral level? Open the door to compromise, and the next thing you know, the Jesus Lizard have signed with a major label and Steve Albini will never have anything to do with them again..

I don't think we're speaking the same language. I'm talking about a responsibility to vote and it's translated as shaming people into voting, and I wonder how that happened. [Also, excuse me for being more elliptical than usual, I'm overtired right now.]

(Perhaps you have already answered this elsewhere.)

MEL GIBSON: 'HAVING DOUBTS' ABOUT BUSH

It's a strange combination.

Between love and Ludacris there lies...OBSESSION.

C'est un battement tendu
http://www.artofballet.com/battementtendu.jpg

To try to put the nail in the coffin of this idea once and for all - in fact it is the reverse, turnout for the primaries reached record HIGHs in most of the primaries this year up through and including the Washington primary on Feb. 7, after which it was basically over, as was the intent of the primary schedule - get a nominee fast and save our $ for the general. The details...

The 2004 Iowa primary turnout roughly matched the record for Iowa caucus turnouts.
The 2004 New Hampshire turnout easily beat the previous record for NH primary turnouts by 30%.
The 2004 Arizona, South Carolina and Delaware turnouts destroyed the previous records in each state, more than doubling if not tripling them.
The 2004 Washington State turnout buried the previous record by a factor of four to five.

No records were set in Missouri, where no one had campaigned until the week before the race on the assumption that Gephardt would win easily, or New Mexico, also largely ignored, or Oklahoma, not exactly Democrat country. And admittedly, turnout was extremely low on Feb. 7 in Michigan, which might be attributable to their use of internet voting.

Turnout fell off after Feb. 7 because Kerry had won 9 primaries and lost 2, winning 3 times the committed delegates of every other candidate. Dean had clearly been rejected, and Edwards clearly wasn't going to put up much of a fight. We had a nominee that primary voters were satisfied with. Nevertheless, voters continued to turn out, beating the previous record in Virginia on Feb. 10 and more than doubling the previous record in Utah on Feb. 24.

On Super Tuesday, when NY and CA voted, no state besides VT beat the previous records, most of which go back to 84 or earlier. Nevertheless, more than 6.5 million Democrats turned out that day, nearly half of them in CA, where turnout beat 1988 and reached 80% of the prior record, set in 1972 when the nomination hinged on the state's vote. Does anyone seriously believe that Bush has a chance of winning NY or CA?

Even if the turnouts were record lows, this has little significance for the general election this year. Most Democrats don't care who the nominee is, and would have been satisfied with most if not all of the candidates; all we want to do is beat Bush. We are not interested in jumping for joy.

Most of my numbers, by the way, come from here.

I'm not sure what coffin you're nailing shut, since I already said:
"There were high numbers - when it was a contested race. And when it became Kerry... all that faded away. The interest in the process dropped - and that's bad for November. People being excited by the candidate means down-ticket support (cf. Nader helping Democrats overall)."

So you're only sixty posts late to expound on something I agreed with!

Interesting.

I'm responding to points you made, quite likely for only my own edification, but the minds I might hope to influence are those of others.

Interesting. The model is very accurate respecting past elections, and it now predicts Bush will win with more than 58% of the vote. The only election in which he was substantially off was 92, where he predicted Bush would win more than 50% of the 2-party vote. Perhaps Perot is the factor.

more proof that as goes the economy, so goes the election.

Note two caveats...

"Regression analysis assumes in the present context that the structure of voting behavior in the future will be like it has been in the past---as it has been estimated using the historical data back to 1916. One can never rule out a sudden shift of structure that makes this assumption wrong. For example, the Bush administration has made many large changes in foreign policy and in some social policy, and it may be that these changes are so large that voters radically change their voting behavior. Perhaps voters look much more now at foreign policy and social policy than they did in the past and less at how the economy is doing."

and

"Another possible pitfall is that the equation is misspecified because it does not have a job growth variable in it, only an output growth variable. Historically output growth and job growth are so highly correlated that very similar estimates are obtained using either. They are too highly correlated for one to be able to estimate separate effects. If in 2004 output growth is fairly good (as assumed for the current vote prediction), but job growth is not, this would lead the equation to be off if job growth is in fact more important in voters' minds than output growth."

I would guess that the average voter cares very little about output growth, but they care quite a lot about job growth. So if the correlation between the two continues to break down over the next few months, then I would place less credence in that economic analysis.

Didn't most economic analyses predict that Gore would win in 2000, since the economy was still relatively good?

Bush haters, start your boners. Other than the comment about "Too close to vested interests", it seems pretty much OTM. (And I look forward to a similar cover on John Kerry, which I predict will never happen.)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

(Maybe this deserves its own thread, but I'm always with the political)

On the surface, good news for the country and for Bush. My initial political response is great, what took so long? We still have yet to reach the single-month total - 344,000 - that Bush predicted for every month following July 2003. And this month's number is about the same as the average month of the Clinton Presidency. And it's still true that Bush has lost more jobs - 2 million plus - than any President since the Depression.

But I'm not sure that even the numbers themselves are good news. I have some politically-motivated theories, but I don't know if my amateur reading of the numbers is correct. Can anyone help interpret them? Here's what I see...

The seasonally-adjusted "Establishment Data" (the BLS statistics) show 308,000 new nonfarm jobs, 277,000 of which are in the private sector. As has been reported, the jobs are spread broadly across various service industries (retail trade, professional and business services, education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and government, where most of the growth was in state and local education), and are also drawn from the construction industry in numbers greater than from any service subsector (after a construction decline the previous month). None of the new jobs were created in manufacturing, but I suppose it's a good thing that March 2004 was the first month without manufacturing job losses after 44 straight months of decline.

Here's the interesting statistic for me, from the Household data - the seasonally-adjusted number of persons at work part-time for economic reasons (slack work or business conditions, could onl find part-time work) also increased by about 300,000. Does all or most of the job growth then come from part-time jobs? If so, is it possible that employers are simply cutting (halving?) hours to create more shifts and allow the hiring of more part-time workers (or even shifting full-time workers to part-time)? The BLS commentary says of the increase in those working part time for economic reasons, "[t]hese individuals indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs." (emphasis added) Is it revealing that the number working part time because of slack work or business conditions (those who had their hours cut) is twice the number of those working part-time because that's all they could find (those hired for the newly-created shifts)?

If this phenomenon explains many of the new jobs, is it also the reason that the seasonally adjusted average workweek for production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.1 hours? And that average weekly earnings for same fell by 0.2 percent?

Is it appropriate to call this Enron job accounting? After all, despite the increase in jobs, the number of unemployed actually grew, by nearly 200,000 from February to March? Or is it possible that this is good - that some of the newly-unemployed are people who had previously given up looking for work? The BLS release provides no monthly data, but describes the number of persons who want work but are not looking (and the subset of "disaffected" workers) as about the same as that a year earlier.

Predicting anything at this point is a mug's game and the obsessive tracking of everything and anything about this election is dulling and overwhelming in terms of information. THERE IS STILL HALF A YEAR TO GO -- and so much can happen in between. Personally I will not start seriously guessing at any results until maybe Columbus Day...or maybe even Halloween.

Reminder: Kerry will need luck, too. How about we have Sabato tell us the number of presidents who were fired while a) leading a war and b) riding a strong economy? If Bush is pushing 250K jobs per month all summer long, Kerry will need a lot of "luck" in Iraq.

But a good link nonetheless Gabbneb. Mainly because it sums up much of my perspective on the matter.

Even waiting until then didn't help for me last time.

The CW also says that the poll-leader after the second convention wins the election. But in the days of the Feiler Faster Thesis and the GOP's 72-Hour Campaign, the CW may be dead.

Bush has pushed the USA down the hopper so fast it's scary. I can only hope a President Kerry will be able to take the bag of shite he's handed and use it to make something better grow. BushCo is so horrible I cannot contemplate another 4 years. But then, I survived Nixon and Reagan, so I presume I will survive another four years' dose of BushCo if I must. I shudder to think.

There could be a tie, of course.

???

Precious little of yours ever wants to surface, Stuart. In fact, I don't think it ever has, once.

The entire war was and is an idiocy. War is idiocy, for blatantly obvious reasons. But when it comes to the stated goals of trying to stabilize and promote Iraq as a healthy democracy that somehow will have nothing to do with anything remotely named al-Qaeda, all I have seen from BushCo in Iraq -- ALL I have seen -- is expediency, snap decisions, bandaids, new announcements, changing expectations, backtracking, passing of blame. It's power politics dressed up in fig leaves of purported idealism, and I don't think even Wolfowitz believes it anymore -- and if he does, he is a fool.

At best I see an overstretched military tracked into longer and longer commitments that provides an enforced pacification in area requiring more attention, money and manpower than BushCo thought necessary, due to their willingness to gamble with lives, resources and more. And quite frankly I don't exactly find that the best use of anyone's time, nor an appropriate reward for the planners of this whole folly.

I never imagined we'd see a quick pullout of US forces even if things had gone impossibly well and there'd been elections by now and everything was peaceful. The Hussein regime is not the last domino to fall. I always expected the US to have a long term presence in Iraq.

Ned, I understand your criticism of my "optimism" or whatever you want to call it. But I'm not here to weigh the pros and cons of every report coming out of Iraq to determine whether or not the coalition is worthy of my support, and neither are you. I'm here to support the mission in Iraq because I believe it's necessary and right and we can succeed. You obviously disagree. We would both like to see each other be more objective maybe, but we also both agree that there are times where objectivity threatens our goals.

Divorced from the reality of the exercise of political power, your dreams are charming -- and the potential for them crashing is something I don't think you fully understand or want to admit to yourself. But if in turn my fears don't become realized, then how relieved am I? Very.

I've said this before -- my surprises will be pleasant ones. Yours will be the opposite.

Stuart gets a sort of funny feeling when he quotes Reagan. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If, as Paul Bremer says, the future of Iraq will require it to harbor 14 permanent US military bases regardless of what the Iraqi government wants, then obviously we aren't progressing toward a sovereign Iraq. In that case, I propose to you that the only way to make progress toward a pacified Iraq is to impose our presence with such overwhelming force and brutality as to crush all Iraqi opposition to US sovereignty over Iraq.

BTW, George Will recently recognized this thorny truth in one of his more honest columns. He was in favor of imposing crushing force in the service of "imperial" necessity. So much for "liberating" those always handy "Iraqi people" Bush loves to invoke. We shall, however, have succeeded in liberating Iraqi oil.

one example from the Clinton admin, please

When the "messiah" comes, you might be surprised to find that most mainstream Democrats will not vote for him or her.

I voted third party last time, remember? ;-)

I ain't gonna get too into this because Dems get real mad about it & there's always hurt feelings all around, but

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9812/16/iraq.strike.03/
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/23news.html
http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/20/us.strikes.01/

For card-carrying Dems, this'd all be OUTRAGEOUS! had a Republican president been in office. Party politics is for suckers, both parties offer safe haven to tyrants

At the very least, he'll pursue American imperial interests with more caution and less gusto. He won't pull us out of Iraq, either. That's a given in my view. But at least it will eat at him and when his lame policies are cogently criticized, he'll listen with one ear. That's not much, but it beats our current headlong charge into catastrophe, with flags flying and heads high.

x-post Aimless OTM and that's why I'm biting the bullet and voting Kerry this fall, even though when I say he's a "lesser evil" I do mean evil of the will-burn-in-Hell-if-there's-a-God variety

Absolutely not. If Saddam had kicked out UN weapons inspectors on Bush's watch, Dems would support a limited response in a pre-9/11 era (and quite possibly post- as well). And if bin Laden bombed US embassies, even pre-9/11, we would support retaliatory responses even if Bush were in office. We would question Tenet's intelligence on the Sudan strike just as we did when Clinton was in office. We would question Bush only if, as he has done, he 'stovepiped' the Sudan intelligence. We didn't do that with Clinton, because there was no evidence of same.

where were the outraged voices then?

there were a hell of a lot of them. those on the left didn't remotely seal their lips. many Democrats, however, are not necessarily on "the left," as you define it.

Uh, that's not really what was reported--I think Woodward's report was damaging enough without interjecting conspiracy theories into it.

But it looks like what they got in return is what they've always received in return--the US looks in the other direction while they get to continue their usual dastardly deeds.

The thing is, they're waiting so long to drop prices that it makes you wonder if they've come up with a few more demands in the interim.

This weekend, my brother was parroting the mantra that "good news on the economy or in Iraq = bad news for Kerry."

Do you think that is true?

well, what was reported was that there was a deal to lower prices before the election. i don't think that my inference that they have raised prices in the interim (and prices are up, obviously) such that they don't actually lose anything when they lower them is that much of a stretch.

The thing is, they're waiting so long to drop prices that it makes you wonder if they've come up with a few more demands in the interim.

Woodward says that they will drop prices close to the election than now, so they're not waiting longer than planned.

my brother was parroting the mantra that "good news on the economy or in Iraq = bad news for Kerry."

I thought that this was your opinion as well. Sure, it sounds correct on first impression.

Good news on the economy is almost certainly better for Bush than it is for Kerry, but the way things are spun good news has to be plentiful and sustained. I absolutely believe that the economy will drive the election more than any other issue unless Iraq vigorously implodes, but what I'm getting at is: where should Kerry's competitive advantage come from if the economy continues to improve?

I'm not so sure. To me, it presents evidence of among other things a potentially impeachable offense - using the Afghanistan money for setting up the Iraq plan without the knowledge of Congress - but I'm not sure that this was barred by the appropriations language. But that's pointy-headed stuff to most people. I think the book actually comes out favorably for Bush - and unfavorably for Tenet - on the decision to go to war. It comes down to whether you believe any of this crap. I don't, especially. Even if Bush supplied real quotes, the only explanation to me is that CIA sold him on bad intel so that he would go to war and everyone would see him as a disaster. That seems a little far-fetched, but some say they (or former agents) engineered Plamegate for a similar purpose. Not quite the same thing, of course.

I don't buy the "pass the buck to Tenet" defense either, fwiw.

I'm sure Bushco defenders will start drawing up historical comparisons to show that the effect is explained away by demand

And Kerry attackers will point to the supply.

where should Kerry's competitive advantage come from if the economy continues to improve?

Well, in the first place, I'm not sure that a competitive advantage is necessary in this race. Most people have made up their minds, more people self-identify as Democrats, and independents lean Kerry 2-1.

If you presume that a competitive advantage is necessary, it's not obvious that one big one exists if the economy "continues to improve" (which I don't expect, at least regarding jobs). But it's not obvious that one big one exists now. And I don't see Kerry running away from the economy. Voters trust the candidates about equally on the issue. And Kerry still has an important statistic to point to - Bush's projections should have given us 5 million jobs by now, but we've lost almost 2 million. Thus, he can say that we can't trust Bush on this front just as he has proven untrustworthy elsewhere. The refinancing boom is ending, and we're facing an interest rate hike. Greenspan may hold off until after the election, but it may be unavoidable.

Which isn't necessarily to say that I take it as complete truth, but don't you think that a guy like Woodward would have verified that anecdote with the others in the room at the time? Surely it wasn't just Bush's recollection; makes you wonder if Tenet corroborated everything. The CIA conspiracy aspect of it is compelling, but it's hard for me to believe that even the CIA is so craven that it would throw a country into war just to get rid of Bush or Tenet.

I agree that Bush probably doesn't think that "progress" in Iraq will ever be shown except for philosophically. The road to hell being paved with good intentions, etc.

That things are not getting obviously worse.

The interest rate hike will come before the election only if demand at Treasury bill auctions starts to decline to very soft levels - which is altogether possible, given the way BushCo and the Republican Congress are running the war on borrowed money (LBJ redux).

I don't think the bad news has stopped, by any means. It's better for the country if it comes out before the election. For those who say the President can't affect the economy, this time they are wrong.

The business cycle would have recovered by now under better management in D.C. The weak dollar and ballooning budget deficit are a direct result of the Bush Multi-Trillion Tax Cut and the Bush War in Iraq. No amount of monetary policy can paper over the disaster Bush has made. Them chickens will roost.

it would seem so. it's the kind of thing that if this were the other side, conservatives would be up in arms about and translating into soundbites playing upon paranoia. but Democrats don't do that sort of thing, and the media isn't going to start on its own. they all know about the saudi relationship so just regard it cynically and don't protest.

the plan was marked with a classification that barred showing it to foreigners, so it violated rules about classified information, but i'm not sure what the law is.

Why don't you believe the "slam dunk" story Gabbneb?

Your probable instincts are correct - it doesn't comport with my image of Bush. I'm supposed to believe that he talks about "Joe Public" and what Joe does or doesn't understand? That he wants to get lawyers involved in intelligence-gathering? The "slam-dunk" exchange just seems odd - how would you act it out? Doesn't it make Tenet sound sort of nuts?

I would think that Woodward did confirm the dialogue with attendees at the meeting. If Bush is making stuff up, others can be presumed to go along with it. Not Tenet, perhaps. But I'm not going to rule out the possibility that he'd approve it even if wrong.

I should add, "or his public image"

I don't understand this.

If independents have made up their minds 2-1...then the only way Chimp can win is if the people who have made up their minds stay home in November?

A sustainable, competitive advantage is always necessary. Job loss (and the recession) began during Clinton's term, and while Bush will have to explain away the job loss that continued under his watch, if the economy continues to produce jobs at a good clip (say 200K) then Bush will probably be able to claim that his plan is working. And inflation is hardly a worrisome pressure at this point--it's still historically low and would have to go apeshit in order to bring panic to any economist not named Krugman. Yes, the Fed raising the rate would have an effect on the economy but it will be a minor adjustment at best.

I would much rather Kerry attack Bush for all the stupid shit he's pulled--expanding the government, for one, rather than try to make the case with his embarrassing "misery index."

Oh please. Do I really need to waste bandwidth listing examples?

I actually think the Bandar thing should be getting front page news everywhere.

Doesn't it make Tenet sound sort of nuts?

Given the amount of times the CIA has been totally wrong about shit, it sort of fits the image of that outfit. But on the other hand, the US was convinced that Saddam was a Bad Guy for so long, through multiple administrations, it's not that surprising that minds were made up like that.

I don't know what to make of Woodward. Getting a source like Bush on the record, given the context of the book being written, makes me wonder what Woodward didn't write. And also what he didn't know when he wrote it.

absolutely untrue. Yes, manufacturing job loss did begin under Clinton. But jobs increased at a steady rate until Bush took office, at which point they began declining. The official arbiters of what constitutes a recession, and most economists, agree that the recession began during Bush's term.

Job gains began to fall in 2000. Check BLS.gov under business employment dynamics. Job losses increased that year as well.

The official arbiters of what constitutes a recession, and most economists, agree that the recession began during Bush's term.

It has been under debate by the NBER. And no one on that board thinks that Bush caused the recession--at the latest, the recession probably started in February of 2001, long before his administration had any control over fiscal policy. The early warnings were there in the fall of 2000--the economy contracted slightly slightly that summer.

My greater point is that hanging the recession that ended months and months ago on Bush is a waste of time. Again, if the economy starts to improve--lets say 200K jobs increased from now until November, how firmly decided will the independents be?

whaddaya mean, "long before?" That was the first month they were in charge!

I don't really know if it's bad news for Kerry (just riffing on the previous exchange we've had gabbneb) because as you've pointed out, it doesn't really matter if the economy is expanding at 8% a quarter. The talking class is fixated on the job numbers. I'm guessing for Greenspan to make the statements he made, he probably knows what is going to show up on the indicators Friday. Initial claims Thursday could also be interesting.

Increases in interest rates always comes with expansion, and judging from Greenspan's comments it's not going to be a sharp rise if and when it comes. Inflation is historically low already, and judging from the strong aversion the Fed has for it, it's the least of Bush's concerns. And anyone who makes it a campaign issue is a fool.

Bush's campaign has gone badly; all will agree on that surely. A colossal amount of money wasted on relentessly negative ads, which have made very little difference really to the position. Bush is currently very vulnerable to, as Todd says, energized Democrats turning out in massive numbers, and if there is a repeat of 2000, things will swing towards Kerry in the final stages, like they did to Gore. But... of course, there may be tricks and stunts up the administation's sleeves; who would put it past them to try and stage some decisive event to try and turn things around, when one considers their record?

There are so many variables that it is still tough to call, but I'll bet that Kerry wins by a small margin. It seems definite to me that Kerry will poll more votes than Gore did, as the turnout is likely to be at least in the late 50s; I can't see Bush getting that many new voters, and he will surely lose many who voted for him last time.

Do American elections swing to the left at the death? I'd thought the reverse was universal (wanting-lower-taxes guilt, and that), but that might just be a UK thing...

1) The war will hurt Kerry, not Bush, no matter how bad it gets (actually, the worse/longer the better for Bush). Kerry has no options w/r/t the war; coming out strongly for it, strongly against it, or pussy-footing around in the middle are all equally damaging to him. I can't phrase this argument properly, I wish I could find the article where I read it, it was very convincing (maybe it's linked to on this thread somewhere and I didn't notice it?).

2) Nader will probably end up doing as well or better than he did in 2000, which is a very influential thing indeed in a race this close (although I'm guessing the polls will separate in Bush's favor and that Kerry will lose by more votes than the oh say 2/3 of Nader's votes that would have otherwise gone to him anyway).

Officials said commanders in Iraq had decided to keep an increased US military presence there into the autumn because of resurgent violence and mounting American casualties.

They said that about 20,000 troops now being notified would be used to replace a similar number who are currently serving 90 days beyond their promised year-long tours of duty, which had been scheduled to end last month." - from Scotsman.com

Don, I entirely agree that Todd's assertions aren't necessarily well-supported (I think it goes without saying that his argument is 'provocative' in the outside-CW sense that he acknowledges), although they are supported within his flimsy premise - that the election will follow limited historical precendent - the weakness of which he acknowledges. However, I really doubt that the respected but shabby and sleepy Washington Monthly struggles for anything. Perhaps there is a new regime under Contributing Editor Ben Wall*ce-Wells (two years below me in high school, the ambitious fucker).

I think (perhaps unobjectively) Kerry wins it with ~30-70 EVs. I'd already considered the possibility of a Kerry landslide and consider it more probable than a Bush landslide, but pretty unlikely. (I agree that there's a solid ~170 EVs for Bush, but if that were all he got, it would be a 'landslide', relatively speaking.)

I just wish Kerry would actually FUCKING SAY SOMETHING, OR DO SOMETHING WORTH NOTICING.

For those of us who pay attention, this is excruciating. But most people are not paying attention. We aren't losing anything in a race that will be a referendum on Bush by sitting back while his approval rating keeps dipping. Kerry, who understands cycles well, doesn't want to waste ammunition this early. Nevertheless, he's been advised into dropping the biggest advertising buy in the history of Presidential campaigns in the swing states, starting yesterday.

This is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever read online anywhere.

This is a little confusing--he doesn't want to waste ammunition early but a) he's just authorized a huge check and b) he's also (allegedly) getting ready to waste more ammunition on announcing his Veep early.

For those of us who pay attention, this is excruciating.

Why? The Democratic party (including John Kerry) has spent most of their ammunition defining Bush. I'm not saying that's bad strategy, I'm just saying that Democrats have not been recently united for anything except to beat Bushco.

And some of us who have been paying attention don't find what Kerry's been saying or doing all that compelling, as far as inspiring political activism goes.

Well, he did just write a huge check (1/3 of what he raised last quarter) to buy time for two bio ads, one of which is old. But this isn't the substantive 'ammunition' of the race that will be a referendum on Bush. To the extent that I suggest that this goes against (and it doesn't, necessarily) what I posit is Kerry's preferred strategy - the one that has kept his profile at sea level since Sun Valley, typified by his refusal to give many in the national media the schedule for his rust belt tour last week - it's a concession to his more risk-averse or less savvy advisers from Democratic Congressional circles.

He's not going to announce a Veep 'early' (we've already passed what was considered 'early' two months ago, and he may well wait until the convention), but that also would not be a waste of ammunition (though announcing before mid-late June would seem to be too early for the cycle-dynamic he wants to create).

Someone who is not ambivalent about exercising power.

This is no longer the day after Nader announced, okay?
Yeah.

Isn't it obvious how quickly the anti-Nader sentiment faded?
Not at all.

As far as I can see he's polling as high or higher than he was at this point in 2000, and I don't see any reason why the real idiots that support him will pull the old switcheroo on election day.

Are pollsters even collecting opinions on Nader in large enough numbers these days to indicate popular sentiment on the question reliably? I don't think so.

Last time Nader had the Green Party behind him. This time he has no comparable institutional support. I think the fragmentary support he does have will fall away sooner than election day and I doubt his name will even make it onto as many ballots as he managed as a Green four years ago.

If Nader stays in the race, as he seems determined to do, some people will vote for him; if he drops out, Kerry will surely get more of those votes than Bush; and this election might be close enough to have a different outcome in those two scenarios. So if by "doing as well or better" you mean affecting the outcome, yeah. But in absolute, ballot-count terms, Nader surely peaked four years ago.

He sat down with GMA last week and WSJ; that may be limited in number but hardly by profile.

but that also would not be a waste of ammunition (though announcing before mid-late June would seem to be too early for the cycle-dynamic he wants to create)

"Two well-placed sources inside the campaign have told me that the goal is to pick a No. 2 by the end of May, which would be far earlier than the norm. “--from the Fineman column you linked.

The Veep announcement is an enormous amount of free publicity--ammunition, if you will. Maybe it's not a waste of ammunition, but it certainly is valuable ammunition that doesn't seem to be needed yet. If Kerry is master of the cycles as you posit, then he must be in a dire part of the cycle to feel the need to pull the trigger so early. I think it would be a huge waste of resources, personally.

Hey gabbneb--does it bother you that The Smartest President We've Ever Had is releasing his memoirs in the midst of all this? (I think it's being way overplayed by pundits.)

and it's fluff - an introduce yourself. i'm talking about the meat of the campaign. remember when the AWOL story was out? the Kerry camp got really mad because they were (and are) waiting for later to play that up.

"Two well-placed sources inside the campaign have told me that the goal is to pick a No. 2 by the end of May, which would be far earlier than the norm. “--from the Fineman column you linked.

there are other sources that contradict this

The Veep announcement is an enormous amount of free publicity--ammunition, if you wil

i use 'ammunition' to refer to attacks on Bush's record, the key issue in this campaign.

Hey gabbneb--does it bother you that The Smartest President We've Ever Had is releasing his memoirs in the midst of all this?

no. and i'm not sure that's quite what i called him.

you said on that 9/11 thread (sarcastically)

"Right, because the facts certainly didn't show that Clinton was arguably the most intelligent man ever to serve in the office."

there are other sources that contradict this

Obviously. And frankly, it seems like wishful thinking--void of logic IMO. But it's out there, and I wouldn't have brought it up if a) it wasn't Fineman or b) you had posted it yourself.

and it's fluff - an introduce yourself. i'm talking about the meat of the campaign
It's still high profile, but I appreciate your clarification.

The landslide prediction is insane, I think. It seems like 90% of Americans have decided who they are voting for already, and it's split in half. It's going to be close.

so I don't necessarily assume that Kerry would not match Gore's margins in CA and NY, or that any shortfall would be the cause of a popular vote loss. but I do think that the Bush turnout in the medium and dark red states might be enough to give him a popular vote win, even if Kerry won an electoral victory. in general, I'm really uncertain what the Bush turnout will be like. our last cult of personality in '84 reached levels that in many cases haven't since been matched. but i also think that many on the right are disappointed in and frustrated with Bush, and his turnout could be lower across the board than in 2000. and Reagan didn't have a war hanging around his neck making him look like a loser. how much impact their ground game will have i don't know.

(i'd like a link too)

actually, this is probably statistically unlikely for some reason i'm not educated enough to know about. but even if the election isn't close in many states, you don't need that large a popular margin to have a real electoral landslide - Johnson won 61% of the popular vote and Reagan '84 won 59%, but both won more than 90% of the electoral college. and we're going to have a lower bar for "landslide" this year.

The news, though, was this -- this was the best-attended Dem Dinner ever, and raised more money than ever before. The optimism in the room was completely palpable. These folks are ready to do all of the grunt work necessary (registration, phone banks, lit drops, etc.) to turn out the vote and grab as much of the Dems' natural electorate as possible. They are practically *drooling* with anticipation for the Kerry campaign to come to Ohio.

And Ralph Nader's name was not mentioned once.

This man has made a total botch of his term in office, other than to deliver massive spoils to his corporate sponsors. It will take months of relentless bad news about his incompetance and corruption to wear down his voter base. Even then, he'll hang onto 90% of them, come what may. That is how polarized the US elctorate has become.

Let's all fold our hands and see what new horrors come our way after June 30. It seems inevitable. My curent guess is Tet Offensive Redux.

Under this scenario, the four most populous states could break the same way they did in 2000, but the net Democratic margin in the popular vote would be much smaller. If Kerry outpolls Bush by only half a million votes in these four states, Bush should be able to make up that difference in the remaining 46 states.

He will increase margins in New England (probably taking New Hampshire, and winning big in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut...), and states like Minnesota, Washington and Illinois, I suspect... all pretty big states. Ohio will be closer than last time, even if Bush does win it.

As said above, Bush's margins will depend on how much the 'faithful' turn out to vote for him... despite the GOP coercion, I can't see any great enthusiasm for him in all but died in the wool Rep. states, like Idaho, Utah, Nebraska etc. He may very well struggle in the Western territories like Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico etc...

i have no idea about what's going on in ohio, and i will readily defer to anyone from there (or otherwise knows what's up over there). but what is being said about the ohio dem party now was also said about the pa dem party circa 2000 -- though the jury's still out wr2 THAT (won't know till november actually -- if joe hoeffel wins then clearly all's well), they've also at least begun to get their act together since 2000. so it's possible that THIS may be what brings the ohio dems back to life (or not ... see above).

uh, what? < /aja>

Zogby's very much a liberal, you know that, right? Are you saying that he is tailoring his analysis in some fashion for conservatives? That he sells better to them?

according to NY Times Sunday Magazine like two weeks ago, Kerry still hasn't opened and staffed a campaign office in Ohio. That's deeply troubling.

I don't know much about these things, but I gather it's because he tends to focus exclusively on people who are registered to vote more than others do?

I'd forgotten about this factor, which you have backwards, at least as far as CW goes - Zogby focuses on the traditionally more GOP-leaning "likely voters" rather than the traditionally more Dem-leaning "registered voters". To the extent that his sample can be said to favor conservatives, that should be even better news for Kerry. But his polls have been giving Kerry better results than others in the last few weeks (though he may have also had a closer race when Kerry was way up in February-March). Perhaps there's something different this year? Are registered voters now more likely to go for Bush than likely voters?

Yes, conservatives do like Zogby and he does do work for them, but I really don't think he's a LINO.

Louisiana has never been solidly Republican in the first place - Clinton got more than 50% in '96, and even Carter '80 and Dukakis got ~45%. It has a big city and a big Catholic population.

To the extent that there's a trend, I imagine it's primarily caused by economic changes, particularly the loss of manufacturing and shipping jobs and gains in information class jobs along the lower Mississippi River.

pure mentalism.

I'm just following the genius-I-think map above (on which I see no 'New England'); I guess I needed to add scare quotes.

deep south = SEC gabbneb

with me, you'll have to try again there

actually, I would say that. New England = the East half of "Upper Coasts," afaic

If Louisiana isn't part of the deep south, what do you call E. Texas? Is there a little French bridge that skips over LA?

The regional map I link above argues that politically (and culturally) speaking we benefit from looking at regions that cut across state lines such that different parts of the same state can belong to different regions such that in turn it's inaccurate to describe certain states wholesale as parts of a given region. Referring to that map, I said that 'Appalachia' does not extend to LA, while 'Southern Lowlands' does. Thus, I never said that LA is or is not part of the "deep South," though I raised it as a question.

I'm not sure what my answer to the question is. When I hear "deep South" I tend to think that a strict definition would include most or all of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, and perhaps at least part of South Carolina (and, perhaps, the 'Southern Lowlands' portion of Louisiana) as well as perhaps part of Tennessee south of Nashville and West of Memphis. Maybe it also makes sense to include some of the 'Southern Comfort' regions to the South of 'Southern Lowlands,' esp. in Alabama, say, but the word "deep" to me suggests distance from other definable regions such as the Gulf Coast. And, as the charts accompanying the map illustrate, 'Southern Comfort' (as a whole, at least) is demographically different from 'Southern Lowlands' - much smaller black population, many more religious conservatives, more retirees, larger families, decidedly Republican as opposed to evenly-divided between the parties. E. Texas is part of Southern Comfort, not Southern Lowlands. While parts of it may be very similar culturally to the Deep South, I would think that it's more defined by the large and medium/small cities, the Gulf Coast and oil industry, and the OK-AR-LA bible belt. So, my answer is that I don't consider LA automatically part of the deep South by virtue of Texas' being part of the deep South, because I don't consider Texas part of the deep South really. Obviously, Texas is in the 'South' as opposed to the 'North' of the U.S., but as long as we're going to be specific enough to distinguish the Southwest from the 'South' (and Southern California from the Southwest, in many cases), I'm going to distinguish Texas from "the South," which to me (and many people, I think) is really the South-East. To me, E. Texas seems to be a compilation of several sub-regions - the aforementioned cities, Coast, and bible belt interstices, plus the region that really is more Mexico-by-half ('El Norte') than South.

Back to Louisiana. Like I suggested above, I'm not sure it's a state you can define wholesale. The regional map seems to define it well. But if you want to be more specific than the regional map, I'm not sure it's inaccurate to say that there's a little French bridge - I mean that's how the geography (the Mississippi) interacts with the political designation.

But, of course, I'm not from and have never been to the South or Texas so I don't know how anyone from those places uses the term (if they do). How would you define it?

Deep south is simple for me: Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida panhandle. The bottom half of South Carolina. Period. Am I right??

yeah, I didn't think Knoxville counted, but what about Middle Tennessee south of Nashville?

CBS News poll, May 20-23: Bush's approval rating stands at 41%.

If my cousin who was an Army Ranger and about as pro military and conservative as it gets is saying "there is no way I would ever vote again for that idiot", I feel like Bush is in serious trouble. It suprisingly brought out some wrath in some other relatives, whose favorite hobby in the 90s was bashing Clinton.

I know it isn't scientific proof, but it is telling of the current situation.

Wrath as in angry at your cousin or wrath as in they were angry with Bush too? As you say, not scientific, but dang.

As I said, it was suprising.

Possibly, depending on what you'd define as local.

The problem with that is that local news outlets do not comparatively influence coverage of large scale, national issues. The three networks and top 4-5 newspapers have a large influence on how national news is presented, not to mention the syndicates that also fill the coverage in for localities that can't afford to staff reporters in DC.

Think how it would change coverage and perception if there was transparency on political leaning.

Northern La. is deep south; southern La. is something else entirely.

W. Tenn. is deep south; middle and east is not. Similarly, W. Ky. is deep south too (tobacco culture as in cotton culture). Ky. is poorer than Tenn. but in most ways they're pretty similar, culturally and politically.

I make distinction between the south east and west of the Appalachians. I think the term "west south" for W. Tenn. and W. Ky., Miss., N. La., and E. Texas (and NW Alabama) is somewhat a better way than "deep south" to describe it. I see a pretty big difference between Jackson, Miss. and Greensboro, N.C.

Bush is gonna win the south, and I'm afraid he's going to win the election again.

Perhaps since I work in radio I really want to be convinced that we're affecting things. ;)

I think strip mining plays a bigger role in Western Kentucky than tobacco farming does. The latter also isn't just confined to the west: there's lots of it in Central, Northern and Eastern Kentucky too.

Bias in the press corps, including the influence of personal political views, is obviously relevant to whomever is trying to win the election. If we assume that the sampling and results are representative and highly accurate, does it bother anyone here? Should things be different or more diverse? Would it change the polls at all or affect the outcome? If all news outlets were like FoxNews, how would Bush's numbers change?

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=214

it would be great if every survey or poll had details regarding the respondents.

they do - 'likely voters,' 'registered voters,' 'adults,' 'Americans,' etc. the E&P report regarding this poll did not make clear who was interviewed. the poll report itself, though, does - national and local reporters, producers, editors and executives. That still doesn't tell you how senior everyone is, but it satisfies me that they didn't poll simply 'newsroom workers.'

If all news outlets were like FoxNews, how would Bush's numbers change?

I would call that fascism

Yes, but it doesn't bother me. I could care less. But if a reporter is pro-life and they are doing a 1500 word article on a NARAL, I'd like to know that. If there is a conflict of interest, I'd like to know that. There's no way to test for political orientation, although some might argue that a sense of ethics would help a reporter decide when his or her opinion on certain matters might affect the coverage.

they do - 'likely voters,' 'registered voters,' 'adults,' 'Americans,' etc

Yes, but it's very rare that you will see relevant demographics published, which could give better perspective on the results.

I would call that fascism

I guess I must be deeply afraid of it. The central question is does it bother me that there is (false premise alert) a center-to-left orientation in the media, right? If so, no, not at all, because I test by results, which are center-to-right at the moment.

because I test by results, which are center-to-right at the moment

I have no idea what you are trying to say with this.

So, yes, if "all news sources had the same political orientation" as FoxNews, the president's numbers would be different. And if they had the same orientation as The Nation, they would be different. Because the editorial decisions made by those organizations are geared to a certain outcome.

(In which case, NYPost, WS Journal, Dallas Morning News (aka all Belo-owned papers), Washington Times, etc. etc. etc.)

Actually I don't check the Guardian at all unless somebody points out an article to me. I use the BBC World Service news site for the general news fix, though certainly it has a slant.

The circulation of which is matched by those papers listed by milo (including 2 more Belo papers in the top 100), plus that of the Chicago Sun-Times and Orange County Register. Also compare the average viewership of Fox News Channel (1.15 million) with that of CNN (750K). And none of these numbers are big in the first place. So what's the problem?

If there were such an unserved audience for right-leaning news, why would we be missing people to fill the demand?

Oh, did you know that the libertarian candidate will be on the ballot in more states than Nader.

A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.

The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.

"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.

Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.

Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.

Some of those signing the document — such as Hoar and former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak — have identified themselves as supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But most have not endorsed any candidate, members of the group said.

It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential campaign.

Kerry Gets Early Newspaper Endorsement

Wednesday June 16, 2004 5:16 PM

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The Philadelphia Daily News on Wednesday backed Democrat John Kerry for president, saying it was endorsing a candidate early because Pennsylvania is a swing state and residents who didn't vote in 2000 must be pressed to action to defeat President Bush.

``For Kerry supporters to prevail they must do more than just vote, they must bring a ringer into this contest: the more than a million people in the region who did not vote in the last presidential election,'' the newspaper said in an 1,800-word editorial in Wednesday editions.

``We believe these nonvoters - who will have to be mobilized over the next few months - are the key to victory.''

The endorsement comes six weeks before the Democrats gather in Boston to choose Kerry as their presidential nominee.

The paper said that the Bush administration, though deserving of praise for its leadership immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has made poor economic decisions since then, been divisive, ideologically driven and has led the nation into a ``senseless war'' in Iraq.

The newspaper said Kerry, ``who fought in the swamps of Vietnam, can lead us out of the quagmire of the Bush administration'' and urged readers to register to vote and get others to do the same.

``While the rest of the state tilts heavily Republican, Philadelphia has a rich vein of Democratic votes, which has not always been mined. It's because of Philadelphia voters that (Bill) Clinton and (Al) Gore have won the state in the past,'' the editorial said.

I'll be pleasantly surprised to see Kerry win (actually, that's not true - I'll be dancing a jig to see Bush LOSE), but I'm too pessimistic about the state of things to see it happening.

Milo, don't be a pessimist.

WASHINGTON - For the first time, a majority of Americans say they think the United States made a mistake sending troops to Iraq, according to a poll released Thursday.

The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll found that 54 percent of people say the war was a mistake, up from 41 percent who felt that way in early June.

The poll also found that more than half say the Iraq war has made the United States less safe from terrorism. Only a third said it made this country safer.

The finding that more than half now think the Iraq war was a mistake recalls the disillusionment of Americans in 1968 with the Vietnam War. The first time a majority said that was a mistake was in August 1968.

In the Persian Gulf War more than a decade ago, the highest that level of concern got was three in 10.

The negative findings on the Iraq war come as the United States prepares to turn over sovereignty of the country to Iraqis. But there are few signs that American troops will be leaving anytime soon, with violence from insurgents on the rise.

As of Thursday, 842 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Defense Department. Insurgents in Iraq set off car bombs and seized police stations Thursday in an offensive that killed more than 100 people.

The poll of 1,005 adults was taken June 21-23 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Kerry could certainly win; Bush by no means has an insurmountable lead or anything like that. There's no need for fatalism (yet?). A few more days like we had in Iraq yesterday and things will draw all that much closer (sidebar/x-post: most recent Gallup poll has 54% of Americans viewing war as a "mistake" now). And the whole Kerry veep thing, plus the debates, could make a difference. We'll see I suppose.

"fire of a thousand suns for" up there. oops

Which are the latest polls Bush that Bush has gained in? Do you mean the ABC News/Washington Post June 17-20 poll? The one that showed Kerry leading by 8 points in a head-to-head matchup (4 points if you add Nader)? Or do you mean the CNN/USA Today/Gallup June 21-23 poll that showed Bush up by 1 point among likely voters, with a margin of error of 4 points? The one that also showed Kerry up by 4 among registered voters (1 if you add Nader)? The one that showed that Kerry has higher favorable ratings than Bush (58 to 53) and lower unfavorables (35 to 45)? The one that concludes that "Kerry is now better situated than he has been in recent months"? Or maybe you mean the June 22-23 poll that shows Bush up by six? The one that also shows Kerry winning the blue states by only three points, and losing them to Bush if you add Nader? You know, the Fox poll? It also shows Kerry winning the battlegrounds.

Maybe you mean the Zogby's June 15-20 poll of battleground states for the WSJ. This poll should always be treated with skepticism due to the interactive online method (not used in Zogby's national poll). It shows Bush pulling outside the margin of error in Ohio, and gaining a tiny edge over Kerry in Michigan. But it also shows Kerry holding every other blue state, picking up Arkansas, pulling outside the margin in Pennsylvania, and within the margin in Missouri (which Bush barely hangs on to), Nevada, Florida, and West Virginia. Compare Zogby, however, with ARG (who may use a similar method; I'm not sure)'s recent battleground polls. June 15-17, they had Kerry up by 3 in West Virginia. June 21-23, they have Kerry up by 1 in Florida, and up by 6, outside the margin, in Ohio.

The right is consistently more confident about electoral prospects than the left - self-fulfilling prophecy?

drinking on the street, smoking hash on the street, decent real estate prices, Socialist government - what's not to love?

You know you're in trouble when you have to abandon your homeland and seek refuge in Oklahoma. Ask the Cherokee.

That was forced abandonment, so it doesn't count.

But you can't necessarily point to battleground state polls as more predictive than national ones, because those states are probably going to be just as close as the national ones. Look at Zogby's polls - 13 of the 16 battleground states are within the margin of error, and I'm not sure whether the remaining 3 are real battlegrounds.* And even then, it's unclear to me whether polls of different states can be presumed to be equally reliable. Are individual state polls more reliable than overall-battleground results? How much does it depend on the pollster's definition of the battleground states? Zogby/WSJ leave out AZ, for instance. I would think that if the national race stays close, but the battleground states start showing a trend outside the margin, then you can point to something happening. But I'm not sure how likely that is.

*Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Washington. I think Tennessee is probably not really a battleground (Zogby has bush up by 19), but has merely given the appearance of being one with Gore on the ballot in the last three elections. They did elect a Dem governor recently, but so what, NY has a GOP governor. Even if there is a solid Dem vote at or above 45% in TN, it's a nominal battleground like WA (Kerry by 6.5) - it's close, but the only chance of closing the gap would be in a national mini-landslide. It's unclear whether PA (Kerry up by 7) is a nominal battleground or a real one.

A deep rift in the Republican Party has left Congress unable to pass a budget this year, raising the probability that, for the third time in three decades, lawmakers will not agree on a detailed blueprint for government spending and tax policy.

The budget meltdown was triggered by a feud between conservative Republicans who favor continuing to cut taxes in the face of record budget deficits and GOP moderates who are pushing for curbs on tax cuts and are reluctant to slash spending. Even a face-saving effort in the House to impose federal spending curbs blew up just after midnight Friday when 72 Republicans joined a united Democratic Party to torpedo the leadership-backed bill.

The collapse of budget negotiations is more of a political embarrassment than a practical problem for GOP leaders, who only two years ago sharply criticized Democrats for failing to pass a budget when they controlled the Senate. But some Republicans fear that this year's impasse reflects an irreconcilable division within their party that will imperil the government's ability to set tax policy and address ever-widening deficits as the baby boomers begin to retire.

"For a majority of Republicans in Congress, tax cuts are now more important then budget constraints, and they've gotten themselves between a rock and a hard place because you can't have both," lamented former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), a prominent advocate of fiscal restraint.

Both conservative and moderate Republicans say the fight is over the future of their party. Neither side has given an inch. So, two months after the House and Senate passed budget blueprints for the fiscal year that begins in October, Republican negotiators have hit a brick wall in trying to reconcile the two plans. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.), who will retire at the end of the year, refused to declare the budget dead. "I assured everybody I will give up trying to pass a budget six months from now, no matter what happens," he joked.

Most Democrats are fraidy cats who don't think in their hearts they can win the White House or, if they win it, don't think they can hold it for any length of time — and/but John Kerry is an conspicuous exception to this.

Basically, Bush's whole strategy, inherited from years of GOP strategery, is to play on Democratic self-doubt and keep Kerry on defense throughout the campaign season. Kerry doesn't have much self-doubt, so Bush's strategy will fail utterly, and the generic center-left tilt of the electorate, abetted by dissatisfaction with Bush, will take over, giving Kerry a win that might just turn out big.

This kinda belongs on the bush v Howard Stern thread, but Stern's back on the air in most of the markets he went missing from when Clear Channel stations dropped his show...note that a lot of them are in Florida.

FLORIDA IS BUS

I agree with this for the most part. I don't think that the Democrats will take the House this year, and I think that most congressmen will vote along party lines.

But what about someone like Mike Ross, Democrat from southern Arkansas? Though he's so popular that Republicans didn't even run an opponent against him this year, I predict that the fourth district will vote overwhelmingly for Bush. When he gets back to The Hill to cast his vote for president in a tied electorate, does he vote for his party or vote for the man his district voted for? Either way, he's screwed.

And I'm sure that this is the same case for Republicans in New York or California, and I don't even want to think what a Florida congressman would do.

Meanwhile, the Note today comes out with it and says the race is Kerry's to lose.

And it's also consistent with his position all along (including before his vote) that he was voting to give the President authority to go to war as a tool to be used in avoiding a war or at least coordinating a multilateral one.

And it is stated carefully to make clear that his position in hindsight on *this* war is unchanged. He's saying that, knowing that there were no WMDs, he still would have believed that a person leading the Executive Office of the President (like, say, John Kerry in 5.5 months) could be trusted to carry out the war and the aftermath with a sufficient level of competence, but that this does not change his opposition to a President who turned out to be unworthy of the trust placed by the Senate in his office.

You can call this legalism, but I call that a Republican talking point. Should he have explained his position in three paragraphs or one sentence?

And it is stated carefully to make clear that his position in hindsight on *this* war is unchanged. He's saying that, knowing that there were no WMDs, he still would have believed that a person leading the Executive Office of the President (like, say, John Kerry in 5.5 months) could be trusted to carry out the war and the aftermath with a sufficient level of competence, but that this does not change his opposition to a President who turned out to be unworthy of the trust placed by the Senate in his office.

This is all well-and-good, but since when was Dubya EVER a President like the one John Kerry would like to be? Dubya's administration was plenty incompetent long before the Iraq War (9/11, tax cuts, treaty dropouts, etc.).

You can call it a "Republican talking point" (and that's pretty low), I'm just saying as an avid Democratic voter, Kerry's admission turns me off. It probably turns off stronger anti-war voters than me off, as well as swing voters who might buy the "Kerry's a flip-flopper" line, too.

this seems to me the weakest link in his position. regardless of whether you agree with him substantively, I totally question whether (and if so, why) he really trusted Bush (and therefore his ingenuousness), though I think it's probably the best position (then and now) from a political standpoint.

You can call it a "Republican talking point" (and that's pretty low), I'm just saying as an avid Democratic voter, Kerry's admission turns me off. It probably turns off stronger anti-war voters than me off, as well as swing voters who might buy the "Kerry's a flip-flopper" line, too.

but it's not an "admission"! it's what he's said all along. saying anything else would have led to the flip-flopper line (as opposed to Bush's much weaker current response - 'he agrees with me').

In terms of predictions, since I last posted to this thread, things have continued to move against Bush, I'm glad to note.

Is Bush really going to pick up a larger popular vote than in 2000? That would be my question to the pollsters... I just can't seem him managing more than just about par with last time. Yes, he has the warchest of money, but not as great an advantage there as in 2000 (anyone know the exactitudes there??). Kerry has made enough of a difference in the last month or so to bolster positive support for his campaign, which on top of the dislike for Bush, seems like enough. Of course, things could change, but I don't think remarkably from this point, barring a terrorist attack, or a spectacularly good/bad RNC in New York (and seriously, how can anyone see that going well... will GWB pick up any bounce at all? *People know who he is*, and either like him or don't. Any attempt to redefine himself will seem laughable, considering his record, and yet sticking by his guns (so to speak) will produce the retort: 'where are the new ideas?' People are not happier with the state of the country after his 4 years in power; quite frankly, it's not easy to see what Bush can do to convince people to re-elect him. He might be best arranging more panics/'disclosures of intelligence'; don't be surprised if all sorts of dirty tricks are tried to scare the public. It's all he's got to run on, as far as I can see: what a legacy, eh?

saying anything else would have led to the flip-flopper line (as opposed to Bush's much weaker current response - 'he agrees with me').

makes no sense to me. Either things are conditionally the same or they aren't (hint: they aren't).

Is Bush really going to pick up a larger popular vote than in 2000? That would be my question to the pollsters

they'd only give you half an answer. Bush is polling lower than his 2000 totals in every single state in the union. The real question is how many really conservative people there are in swing states who didn't vote for him in 2000 but will now. Karl Rove thinks there are a lot. I'm not so sure. But polls don't really measure this.

anyone know the exactitudes there??).

opensecrets.org

*People know who he is*,

this is actually an interesting point. you'd be surprised how little many swing voters know, though.

(xpost0)

ps. gabbneb yes it is an "admission" as the question is now not "will you vote to authorize war against Iraq?" but is "would you still vote to authorize war against Iraq now that we know there's no WMD?"

no. as my link above indicates, he said before the war that his vote was not conditioned on the existence of WMD.

Have any Republicans of note actually backed Kerry yet?
And surely there'll be some discontent amongst the rank-and-file about no hardline conservatives being allowed a platform...? But no, these Conventions are bland circuses rather than actual serious political debates, and they all love Bush anyway don't they? Which is laughable considering his actual failure to implement much of the conservative agenda, on moral issues etc. Most of the hardline right-wing parts of his agenda have been on 'homeland security', foreign policy etc., and tax cuts for the rich.

Just back now to my earlier talk of 1976 and 2004:

And, indeed far more is *in the open* as to the foreign policy debacles now than in 1976, say (and wasn't Ford supposed to have been a moderate? someone correct me if i'm wrong), yet it proved fertile ground for Carter to run promising honesty and ethics in international dealings. People are surely just as fed up now with the double-talk and mendacity of the politicians in power - Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney can of course be compared to Nixon, Kissinger et al, as well as Reagan era Republicans.

And indeed, does Bush have *one* for. policy success, let anyone one on the magnitude of Nixon's concordat with China of 1973...?

so it was conditioned on pie-in-the-sky expectations of what an already-lousy President would do? That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me.

These what-ifs are really quite pointless. Why doesn't Kerry just say: 'I voted 'yes' to military action at the time because I believed that our President was telling the truth about a threat posed to the United States by Iraq...' ?? Might that not hit reasonably hard at Bush, while covering his own position?

I think that if you - not *you*, but whoever You is: anyone with a vote - don't vote for him, then you are ... part of the problem.

I join with other contributors to the thread in hoping that Kerry can win.

Pinefox: Indeed; simply: why would anyone vote for Nader this time?

None of the left-of-centre Democrats posting here should be in any doubt that Kerry will pursue a vastly different foreign policy, in both tone and aims. Of course... he'll have to tidy up Bush's mess, and dear me, that looks like a bloody hard job right now. But, you know, I do think he's clearly the right sort of man for the job; a 'serious man for serious times' isn't a bad slogan at all; did he himself coin that at the DNC, or was it Clinton?

He's certainly someone who might just restore a bit of credibility to the role of US President. The last four years, I have never been able to take seriously anything the place-holder Bush has said; GWB may not quite be an outright fool, but he certainly speaks like one.

What was that brilliant faux pas last week; 'we are constantly thinking of new ways to harm the United States and its people'?? Does anyone have the exact quote...? :)

But indeed, the point is: the rest of the world and hopefully many Americans, want someone with credibility and gravitas to represent them. And indeed to know that this person is going to be *in charge*; Cheney/Rove et al clearly have the final say rather than Bush in decision making, it seems.

Why doesn't Kerry just say: 'I voted 'yes' to military action at the time because I believed that our President was telling the truth about a threat posed to the United States by Iraq...' ??

He says this in just about every campaign stop he makes.

Certainly knocks into a cocked hat Iain Duncan Smith's proclamation of himself as "The Quiet Man". I'm sure few of you US-centric political observers will even know who he was; it's not your loss if you don't. :) ["The Quiet Man is here to stay, and he's *turning up the volume*!" - said a week or so before he was deposed]

Iain Duncan Smith gets funky fresh!

My point is not about what would make Kerry a more salable candidate. My point is simply to take his statement at face value and evaluate whether or not I agree with it. What he said was that he would have still voted for the resolution granting Bush authority to go to war against Iraq even knowing what he knows today about the lack of WMD in Iraq. If that is true, then I think it reflects poorly on his judgment. The resolution wasn't some hypothetical pie-in-the-sky ethical statement about whether or not a hypothetical war would be justified - it was an explicit granting to the executive branch by the legislative branch of its constitutionally-derived authority to take the country to war. This granting of authority was done on a rushed, politically motivated timetable, a few weeks before the mid-term elections, before the President had made a strong case, before he had enlisted the support of our allies, before the inspectors in Iraq had been given time to carry out their job, before diplomatic pressure had been given time to work in the UN, before the alternatives had been exhausted. Even at a time when the WMD threat seemed imminent, the resolution was far too broad and poorly timed. Why didn't Kerry press for more time, perhaps delaying the vote until after the mid-terms, or attach some requirements to the resolution to ensure that Bush first exhausted non-military avenues in good faith? Instead, he, and the rest of the Congressional Democrats, made a craven political calculation. 9/11 was still fresh in the country's mind, the country was terrified by images of a nuclear-armed Saddam, and the Democrats didn't want to be on the wrong side of a war President with elections rapidly approaching.

If you take the WMD out of the picture, it's hard to imagine how anyone in their right minds would have voted for the Iraq resolution. Even if you accept the idea that it's good for our country to have a doctrine of pre-emptive war, without the WMD, there was nothing for us to pre-empt. The whole house of cards crumbles. Can you picture Bush selling that war to the American people? "Well, it's true that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction, but we still would like to commit hundreds of thousands of our young people to risk their lives over there because he's a bad person. Now sure there are bad people all over the world, in Sudan, for instance, and we aren't sending troops there, but Saddam once threatened my Daddy and besides Iraq has a lot more oil than Sudan does." Kerry wants us now to believe that he would have voted in support of such a war.

muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaah

This one statement hardly in any way affects what *will happen* if he becomes President. Yes, we might prefer him to more vehemently attack the whole appalling mess, but is it politic to do so? Once elected, it may be easier to make a clean break with Bush's policies and denounce them. Like Blair in his first time being able to blame 'the Tories' 18 years in power' for virtually all that didn't go well. It may just ring true for Kerry to do so, considering the mess Bush has made in 4 years; anyone got any figures on the change in the rich-poor gap in his tenure? Clinton made the point masterfully in his DNC speech, I think you'll all agree.

Ta for the thread link, Ned. Dear, dear me... "the IDS card"!?! How ludicrous and forlorn does that whole speech seem now in the memory. 18 standing ovations...

Yes, I do wonder what the world would have been like had a US-equivalent of IDS run for the GOP instead of Bush in 2000... But of course, IDS himself never did actually lead his party in a General Election; I think there were only around 3 by-elections in his stint as leader, too. And the last of those was a shambles (Brent East) for the Tories that I was glad to see repeated in the urban midlands recently. But of course, one could say that Blair is our Bush; of course, so different in tone and style, yet he's nailed to his mast permanently now. The Labour Party is of course 1000 degrees to the Left compared with the US GOP, in terms of members and history; leadership in 2004 is comparable however. One can't at all compare the hapless Tories with the Democrats, though. As they've had a generally (I avoid thought of foreign policy here!) centrist PM and Government to face, and not like the Dems, a divisive, hard-right administration like that of Bush's.

A couple of days ago, Kerry had the chance to address that issue in three paragraphs or one sentence. He chose one sentence, which now forces his handlers and supporters to justify it.

his statement shows that he considered intent to get WMDs, which the post-war evidence shows us never went away, and the threat presented thereby (in the absence of a serious, continuing inspection regime) sufficient justification, even in the absence of any extant WMDs. I'm not agreeing with that as a justification (not necessarily, perhaps), but this wasn't the question - h asked about politics. I take your point about placing more restrictions on Bush in advance of war. I agreed with that. Kerry disagreed. Why? He thought inspection efforts (which he agreed with us should have preceded and perhaps obviated any military effort) would fail in the absence of unified Congressional backing for the compelling threat of military force.

muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaah

see? if you play Calvinball, you'll lose.

Answering this question will surely please me--a lifelong goal of yours, no doubt.

I give him a 2.

And fortunately, we have Kos to predictably play the role of village idiot.

August 12, 2004
POLITICAL MEMO
Bush's Mocking Drowns Out Kerry on Iraq Vote
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - For five days now, as the long-distance arguments between President Bush and Senator John Kerry have focused on the wisdom of invading Iraq, Mr. Kerry has struggled to convince his audiences that his vote to authorize the president to use military force was a far, far cry from voting for a declaration of war.

So far, his aides and advisers concede, he has failed to get his message across, as Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have mocked his efforts as "a new nuance" that amount to more examples of the senator's waffling.

Mr. Kerry's problems began last week when President Bush challenged him for a yes-or-no answer on a critical campaign issue: If Mr. Kerry knew more than a year ago what he knows today about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would he still have voted to authorize the use of military force to oust Saddam Hussein?

As Mr. Bush surely knew, it is a question that can upset the difficult balance Mr. Kerry must strike. He has to portray himself as tough and competent enough to be commander in chief, yet appeal to the faction of Democrats that hates the war and eggs him on to call Mr. Bush a liar.

It is a problem that has dogged Mr. Kerry since he walked through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, and suffered the barbs of Vermont's former governor, Howard Dean, who made Mr. Kerry's vote to authorize action an issue. Now Mr. Bush has taken up where Dr. Dean left off.

"Kerry has always had this vulnerability of looking flip-floppy on the issue and Bush is using this very shrewdly," said Walter Russell Mead, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added "Being silent on the question makes him look evasive, and saying something, anything, gets him in trouble with one side of his party or another."

Mr. Kerry's friends concede the first rounds have gone to the president - "it's frustrating as hell," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware said on Wednesday - but Mr. Bush has his own problems, since the argument re-ignites the question of whether he rushed to war without a plan about what to do next.

It is an issue on which Mr. Bush can still sound defensive. On Wednesday in Albuquerque, he responded to Mr. Kerry's suggestion that the United States could begin pulling troops out of Iraq next year by saying, "I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war, and I'm not going to be sending mixed signals" by discussing pullouts.

Mr. Bush also reaffirmed his stance on the war when he challenged Mr. Kerry. "We did the right thing,'' the president said on Friday, "and the world is better off for it."

Across the weekend, the Kerry campaign debated how Mr. Kerry should respond. "There were a lot of ideas," said one official, "from silence, to throwing the question back in the president's face."

But the decision, in the end, was Mr. Kerry's. He chose to take the bait on Monday at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution - even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction - before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.

Mr. Bush, sensing he had ensnared Mr. Kerry, stuck in the knife on Tuesday, telling a rally in Panama City, Fla., that "he now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq." The Kerry camp says that interpretation of Mr. Kerry's words completely distorted the difference between a vote to authorize war and a decision to commit troops to the battlefield.

Mr. Kerry's answer is being second-guessed among his supporters, some of whom argued that he should have been more wary of the trap.

"I wish he had simply said no president in his right mind would ask the Senate to go to war against a country that didn't have weapons that pose an imminent threat," said one of Mr. Kerry's Congressional colleagues and occasional advisers.

Senator Biden argued that Mr. Kerry is being "asked to explain Bush's failure through his own vote. I saw a headline that said 'Kerry Would Have Gone to War.' That's bull. He wouldn't have. Not the way Bush did. But that wasn't the choice at the time - the choice was looking for a way to hold Saddam accountable."

Such distinctions don't exactly ring as campaign themes. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney did his best to worsen Mr. Kerry's troubles. He issued a statement noting that Mr. Kerry "voted for the war" but turned against it "when it was politically expedient" and now has his aides "saying that his vote to authorize force wasn't really a vote to go to war."

"We need a commander in chief who is steady and steadfast," he said.

Rand Beers, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton and Bush administrations before he left to help Mr. Kerry formulate his foreign policy positions, said in an interview on Wednesday: "We have said we think there are four elements" in Mr. Bush's approach to the war that are clearly different from how Mr. Kerry would have handled the confrontation with Mr. Hussein.

"Rushing to war is one, doing it without enough allies is two, doing it without equipping our troops adequately is three, and doing it without an adequate plan to win the peace is a fourth," Mr. Beers said. "If you want to add a fifth, it's going to war without examining the quality of your intelligence."

In fact, in interviews since the start of the year, Mr. Kerry has been relatively consistent in explaining his position.

Mr. Bush may be seeking his moment now because polls show that Mr. Kerry's approach to Iraq is resonating with voters as strongly as Mr. Bush's - in some cases more strongly. That may explain why Mr. Kerry is willing to suggest some dates for the start of troop withdrawals, something he would not do a month ago.

Mr. Bush still has an edge, polls show, in the handling of terrorism. On Wednesday his campaign released a new television ad in which the president discusses the need for pre-emptive action then says "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th.''

It is the third spot the campaign has released in the last two weeks that refers to terrorism, the first in which Mr. Bush speaks of it himself.

Democrats said that the Bush campaign's decision to have the president refer so much to the Sept. 11 attacks was a sign of desperation. But Mr. Kerry's team is still trying to figure out how their man can crystallize a message on Iraq. "You have to hand it to Bush and Cheney,'' Mr. Biden said. "When it comes to using the big megaphone of the presidency, they are the masters.''

I think that the Constitution gave the war-making powers to the legislative branch for a reason, and I think this justification of the Iraq resolution amounts to an abdication of that responsibility. I don't think it's true that Congress has to vote to authorize war before the President can have enough leverage to negotiate for peace. That creates the sort of Catch-22 situation that got us into this war in the first place.

The revised White House text, which we will vote on, limits the grant of authority to the President to the use of force against Iraq. It does not empower him to use force throughout the Persian Gulf region. It authorizes the President to use U.S. Armed Forces to defend the "national security" of the United States - a power he already has under the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief - and to enforce all "relevant" Security Council resolutions related to Iraq. None of these resolutions, or for that matter any of the other Security Council resolutions demanding Iraqi compliance with its international obligations, call for regime change.

August 12, 2004
POLITICAL MEMO
Keller's NYT Swallows Administration Talking Points Whole While Engaging in Media-Talking-About-Media Naval-Gazing
By GABBNEB

By discussing the serious questions involved (whose relevance to the political campaign I find completely lacking), liberals are aiding and abetting the deeply unserious Bush campaign message of the week, and killing Kerry's ability to talk about health care and energy and the economy.

C'mon, that's baloney. There's no way that Bush could have taken the country to a major war like this without the political cover of a Congressional resolution, regardless of how you split the hairs of police actions vs. wars etc.

By discussing the serious questions involved (whose relevance to the political campaign I find completely lacking), liberals are aiding and abetting the deeply unserious Bush campaign message of the week, and killing Kerry's ability to talk about health care and energy and the economy

It is Kerry himself who deserves all the credit for re-opening this can of worms and taking the focus off of domestic issues again. I don't think that liberals are doing a service to anybody by letting credulity-stretching statements of this nature pass without comment.

WEB-BOARD POSTERS CRITICIZE KERRY'S IRAQ STANCE
-----------------------------------------------
"I Love Everything" Board hotbed of political discussion

(The Interweb) Many regular posters on the "I Love Everything" web-board were critical today of Kerry's stance on the Iraq war.

There's no way that Bush could have taken the country to a major war like this without the political cover of a Congressional resolution, regardless of how you split the hairs of police actions vs. wars etc.

We were both speaking about the Constitution and not political cover.

It is Kerry himself who deserves all the credit for re-opening this can of worms and taking the focus off of domestic issues again.

Right, Kerry deserves the credit for responding to Bush's hypothetical and irrelevant question and explaining a position that never changed but was apparently unknown to his supporters. I find nothing incredible about his statement. THIS IS WHAT HE REALLY BELIEVES AND HAS BELIEVED ALL ALONG. You don't have to like it. I don't, necessarily. But what does it matter, prior to Nov 2, unless you're considering a vote for someone else?

WHOOPS, SORRY, STILL TRAITORIZING. I WILL STAY ON MESSAGE SOON.

it matters because (as stated upthread) the statement or even perception of it (rightly or wrongly) will turn off potential Kerry voters, gabbneb. Ie. not you, not me, not o. nate, but that 3 percent (or whatever) that hasn't made up its mind (that might actually be important given the tightness the polls are indicating).

it wasn't Bush's question, it was a reporter's

please, like Bush didn't spend 5 days talking his question for Kerry and Kerry's refusal to answer, and didn't intend to repeat that ad nauseum through election day

which isn't going to help Kerry at all.

Maybe Kerry really believes that's his position is correct, both as a matter of policy and of politics. However, I think the problem with his position as politics is that it seems to depend on a stack of assumptions and hypotheticals about alternative futures that never took place, and as a result it comes across to the average voter as being willfully obscure and maybe even duplicitous.

Kerry may think that he is giving a simple answer to a simple question. But his answer is really far from being simple, and that's the crux of his political problem - as Bush well knows. This is why Bush's immediate rejoinder was so effective: he simply started mocking Kerry for changing his mind and now supporting the war. Now Kerry knows that he doesn't exactly support the war and that he doesn't exactly not support it, but in trying to explain that to the voters he's just going to tie himself in knots again.

So instead of trying to give the appearance of a simple answer to a simple question, and really entangling himself in more conditionals and nuances, perhaps Kerry really should have given a simple answer, ie., "No, I wouldn't have supported the war in that case."

-- gabbneb (gabbne...), August 12th, 2004.

okay that just confirms for me that Kerry wasn't prepared with an adequate answer and/or way to keep this from playing into Dubya's hands!

Either way it is a bunch of smoke.

George has double backed on so many things it isn't funny. Just look at some of the declarations he made about foreign policy during the debates last election.

but that was the question he felt compelled to respond to

okay that just confirms for me that Kerry wasn't prepared with an adequate answer and/or way to keep this from playing into Dubya's hands!

Look, Bush/Cheney launched an offensive (asking Kerry to respond to the question). For every conceivable Kerry answer (or failure to answer), there was a planned response. I want to know why the response Kerry chose was worse than an alternative.

So instead of trying to give the appearance of a simple answer to a simple question, and really entangling himself in more conditionals and nuances, perhaps Kerry really should have given a simple answer, ie., "No, I wouldn't have supported the war in that case."

I think he did try to give the appearance of a simple answer to a (not simple) question, while simultaneously ensuring that the substance of the answer was accurate/honest (and therefore complex). Aren't you saying that he should have lied/flip-flopped?

Is the situation in Iraq getting better? Not really, just look at the last week. Is going to improve before the election? Somewhat doubtful. Could it get worse? Possibly.

Let's face it: Bush flip-flops all the time. He just doesn't give the appearance of flip-flopping as much as Kerry does. And it's statements exactly like the one Kerry made this week that give him that reputation. Besides, Kerry wouldn't have had to lie or flip-flop, he could have just answered the question a little differently than Bush asked it. I.e, instead of answering how he would have voted on the resolution, which leads to endless hair-splitting about what that vote meant, he could have answered the deeper question, the question that's really more relevant anyway: would the war have been a good idea?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2105353/

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said a Republican group that questions whether he deserved his three Purple Hearts and Silver Star is lying and is a ``front for the Bush campaign.''

``More than 30 years ago, I learned an important lesson -- when you are under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attacker,'' Kerry said to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston. ``That is what I am doing today.''

``Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth -- and they're not telling the truth,'' Kerry said. ``Here's what you really need to know about them -- they're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign.''

Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, a Republican, contributed $100,000 to the Swift Boat group, according to Internal Revenue Service records. Kerry's statement came after the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran television ads in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia saying Kerry wasn't under fire when he earned a Silver Star for rescuing an American soldier from a Vietnamese river.

Bush Campaign Response

``John Kerry knows that President Bush has said that his service in Vietnam was noble service,'' said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for President George W. Bush's campaign.

``John Kerry knows that the Bush campaign has criticized John Kerry for his vote against money for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bush campaign has tried to have a debate about the future, not about the past,'' Schmidt said.

Kerry was accompanied by Drew Whitlow and Billy Zaledonis, former naval officers who served under his command in Vietnam. Whitlow called the accusations by the Swift Boat group ``disgraceful.''

Paul Nace, a Marine Corps veteran who also accompanied Kerry and said he has known Kerry for 30 years, said he and other veterans thought the attacks wouldn't work because they are ``completely dishonest.''

``The Navy records show what happened, the after-action reports show what happened, and we are confident over the next couple of days the truth will become clear to people,'' Nace told reporters.

Television Ads

The Washington Post reported today that military records of Larry Thurlow, one of Kerry's accusers, show that Kerry's boat was under fire when he pulled the Army officer, Jim Rassman, from the water.

``Thirty years ago, official Navy records and every person there documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts,'' Kerry said. ``Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.''

The Kerry campaign today began a new television ad in Wisconsin, West Virginia and Ohio in which Rassman, a lifelong Republican, says Kerry saved his life by pulling him from the water after enemy gunfire knocked him from another craft.

``It blew me off the boat,'' Rassman says in the ad, according to a Kerry campaign script. ``All these Viet Cong were shooting at me. I expected to be shot. When he pulled me out of the river, he risked life to save mine.''

Book About Kerry

The Swift boat issue is the subject of a book called ``Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,'' written by John O'Neill, who served on Swift boats alongside Kerry and has criticized Kerry for more than 30 years. O'Neill was recruited by President Richard Nixon's White House in 1972 to challenge Kerry after Kerry emerged as a critic of the Vietnam War.

``Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that,'' Kerry said. ``Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on!''

Perry, chief executive of privately held Perry Homes in Houston, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

``Perry has been a prominent fundraiser going back to the mid-80s,'' said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a research group on money and politics that reported Perry gave almost $4 million to Republican Texas state candidates in 2002.

In addition to Perry's $100,000 contribution to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, he has given $28,000 to Republican federal candidates and political committees in the past two years, according to records compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

Those amounts include $2,000 to Bush's re-election campaign, $10,000 to the Republican-supporting Club for Growth, and $1,000 to the campaign of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Republican from Texas, according to the records.

ps. nobody heard of Barack Obama before his keynote, either.

Honestly. No one cares about this guy. They may as well have gotten James Traficant or what's-his-name in Louisiana to give the keynote, if that's all they got.

Miller's spot at the podium is a total waste of time, a dumbass move by a dumbass party.

Zell Miller is as inconsequential as Ron Reagan was at the DNC in Boston--gabbneb is exactly right on this

I do expect Miller's speech to be more consequential than Reagan's (though more effective than zero isn't saying much)

reagan's speech not much but did play up 'stem cell' bait which it appears rove's dum enuff to have bit at

more powerful than Ross Perot?

thanks for the recap on Zell's career JB, and those of us that live here know he's been a force--he may have sealed Georgia for Slick Willie but anything more seems a stretch. But it's a provinicial force at best (and don't get me started on the Hope Scholarship, a good idea gone very bad), and the only way I can read this move is that he's there to shore up the base. Which of course, is a grim sign of the times for the Bushies if that's the case.

You seem to be pretty confident about Florida already Gabbneb. Watch your ass on that one.

Although I must admit the kooks of the right wing in this state are particularly frightening.

Tony Fabrizio, of the Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates,... issued a gloomy memorandum last month on Bush’s prospects among swing voters. “Our analysis of ‘undecided’ voters in our most recent Battleground State Survey reveals that they are currently poised to break away from President Bush and to John Kerry based on the following findings,” he wrote. “They are more than twice as likely to see things headed down the wrong track as compared to voters overall. They give President Bush a net negative image rating. They give President Bush a net negative job-approval rating. A solid majority sees the country as being worse off than they were four years ago. They are significantly more pessimistic about the current state of the nation’s economy. They are significantly more pessimistic about their own current financial condition. They are twice as likely to see the number of jobs in their area as decreasing instead of increasing. They are significantly more likely to favor the federal government doing more as opposed to doing less. They are more likely to be pro-choice on the issue of abortion. They are more likely to have seen or heard advertising critical of President Bush than of John Kerry in the past year. John Kerry holds a slight net positive image rating.” In conclusion, Fabrizio wrote, “Clearly if these undecided voters were leaning any harder against the door of the Kerry camp, they would crash right

God bless Errol Morris.

https://www.moveonpac.org/donate/switchad_winners.html

xpost hahaha blount you still crack me up.

...aside from the great one-sentence definition of human beatboxing! Way to go Alex Ross!

I didn't miss any part. I provided a link and one word. With every post I make, does your response have to include something you made up?

Huh?

I think Kerry should be doing as much as he can to sow doubt about that accomplishment. He should play up the fact that we let Mullah Omar and Osama get away (by being too reluctant to use ground troops in Tora Bora), that Al Qaeda is still active, that Afghanistan is still not in very good shape, and that we haven't done as much as we could be doing to fight terrorism and protect our own country.

I also think that Kerry needs to find something in his resume besides Vietnam that shows why he would be better than Bush at fighting the terrorists. Perhaps he could play up his success investigating BCCI in the Senate. I think that people are bound to think there's something fishy about a guy whose greatest accomplishment is that he got some buckshot in his ass (pardon the expression) in Vietnam 25 years ago. He needs to find something more recent to point to.

And while Kerry's positions are a lot more explicit than most people around here understand them to be or characterize them as, I agree that he has left a lot of play in them, both politically and policy-wise (this is in part a reflection of his real fiscal conservatism - he's not going to do stuff he can't pay for). And I think this again is something we'll hear more from him on soon. Once Bush has stated his 'second-term agenda', Kerry has maximum opportunity to refine his for contrast.

he's not going to do stuff he can't pay for

well, that's debatable on many levels but I have to give him partial credit for at least paying lip service to the concept.

Kerry has also gone on record as saying that Bush has won every political debate he's been in in the last twenty years. He won against Ann Richards, and he went 3-0 against Gore.

Who knows if Bush's record will be 3-0 after November, tho'.

I will admit that Gabbneb's unrelenting ground campaign--endles, spintastic poll posting--has given me pause, but it has never been overly convincing.

It's because Bush is allegedly going after the Third Rail of politics tonight: Social Security. I am shocked he has the audacity to do this at the convention.

Even though Social Security (and more importantly, Medicare) is in dire need of reform, Kerryco has the brains to avoid discussing it in a forum such as this. Bush is set to open up a huge can of worms, and the Kerry campaign is going to be given a time-tested issue to hammer away with in the next two months. I am shocked Bush is going to hand over an issue that Kerry will be able to demogogue so easily with seniors, given the ramifications in states like Florida.

Facts Are Lost in Bush, Kerry Campaigns

Thu Sep 16, 5:14 PM ET

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Whether a distortion on jobs, hairsplitting on health care or a half-told story about Iraq (news - web sites), facts are getting lost as President Bush (news - web sites) and Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) reach full-throated roar in the campaign...

fun little fact-checking thing on the AP today, talking about how both sides are selectively interpreting the facts.

the crucial bits are the ones the article leaves out, in regards that one side has does this a LITTLE more than the other, or the fact that it's the MEDIA'S job to actively gauge and/or discredit what things are reported to the populace, as a opposed to just be stenographic reportage of whatever some guy said on one day, and whatever the other guy said in response.

© 2004 Associated Press

Yeah, right, high-growth areas like Philadelphia where there are lots of opportunities for the Republicans to pick up new votes.

WASHINGTON — In an election where most voters have already chosen sides, the presidency could be decided by a small slice of America in the mushy middle -- wavering voters who are more likely than others to question President Bush's honesty and think the war in Iraq was a mistake.

An Associated Press study of 1,329 "persuadable" voters, conducted by Knowledge Networks in advance of the presidential debates, suggests these people are deeply conflicted about change in the White House. While they have problems with Bush, they also have doubts about Democratic Sen. John Kerry's leadership skills and believe Bush is best suited to protect the nation.

One in every five voters is persuadable -- including about 5 percent who tell pollsters they don't know who will get their vote and about 15 percent who say they are leaning toward one candidate but could switch to another. In past elections, as much as a third fit that description, but most of the nation was quick to pick sides this year in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.

It's possible many persuadable voters will stay home Nov. 2 out of frustration with their choices, but there are enough of them floating in the political center to alter the race for the White House.

"I don't want to see Bush get in, but I don't want to vote Kerry just to keep Bush out," said Grace Elliott, a 70-year-old retiree from Portland, Ore. She opposes the president's conduct of the war but says of Kerry: "He just makes me feel uneasy."

Bush and Kerry are pitching their campaign rhetoric to voters like Elliott, with the Republican incumbent calling his challenger a vacillator who can't be trusted to lead the nation at war while Kerry accuses Bush of misleading the people on Iraq and other issues.

In the AP study, 1,329 people were first interviewed Aug. 31 to Sept. 2 and then re-interviewed Sept. 21-27.

In the initial screening, 18 percent said they didn't know who would get their vote, with the rest evenly split between leaning Kerry or leaning Bush. The followup interviews found that 13 percent of the 1,329 had become committed to Bush and 11 percent to Kerry.

Of the 937 persuadable voters remaining, 58 percent said it was a mistake to go to war against Iraq. By contrast, polls of all likely voters show that less than half think the war was a mistake.

Many persuadable voters echoed Kerry's accusation that Bush let Iraq distract from the global war on terror. "It seems Osama crawled away and nothing was said about it," said Joy Phillips, 52, of Jacksonville, Fla.

But they favored Bush over Kerry on the question of who would best handle the situation in Iraq, 52 percent to 41 percent, roughly the same as all likely voters.

"The more Kerry talks, the more I get turned off by Kerry. After Thursday, I'll know for sure, but for now it's Bush," said Marcia Vinick, a retiree from Scotia, N.Y., who voted for Al Gore in 2000 and opposes the war.

Kerry holds a 2-to-1 advantage among persuadables on who would best create jobs, though the Democrat has lost his advantage on the jobs issue in polls of all likely voters.

On personality traits, only 32 percent of persuadable voters consider Kerry decisive while 79 percent attribute that quality to Bush. That tracks with polls of all likely voters.

Paula Larson, an undecided voter who used to lean toward Kerry, said electing Kerry as commander in chief "would send a signal of weakness."

Some 42 percent of persuadable voters say Bush is honest, considerably lower than he rates among all likely voters.

Persuadable voters leaning toward either Kerry or Bush say the main reason they might eventually vote for the incumbent is they have doubt about Kerry's ability to lead. Or they don't know enough about him.

On the other hand, they said the main reason they might vote for Kerry is they disagree with Bush's positions, especially on Iraq.

Among voters who moved from the persuadable column to firmly behind Bush, most cited personal qualities such as leadership.

heh. shenanigans.