Horse Race
I’m reading this post, and I realize that it is horribly written, and the message that I was trying to get out does not come through.
So I’m redoing it, and updating it.
John Kerry’s campaign took off when he selected John Edwards as his vice presidential candidate. He toured the nation for a while, received a good deal of good press, and saw his fortunes rise in the polls.
This lead us into the Democratic Convention. Despite all protestations to the contrary from the denziens of talk radio and such who continue to this day to point to the one poll that served their purpose out of several polls that didn’t serve their purpose, Kerry received a “bounce”.
Kerry continued the momentum from there with a successful post-convention tour, and it is at the high point at the end of this successful tour that we can guage the far-perimeters of Kerry’s potential victory.
There was a controversy back in June about the possibility that Kerry might delay to September acceptance of his nomination. A fluke campaign finance laws that stops a candidate from fund raising to his campaign stash when he accepts nomination… or something to that effect. Since the candidate needs to keep a bulk of campaign money for the stretch club, Bush had the funding advantage through August. You will notice that the Kerry ads you saw in August were from various 527s (and the Democratic National Committee) and not from the Kerry/ Edwards Campaign. (They ended up reluctantly releasing some campaign ads for theirownselves to respond to a certain well-coordinated Republican 527…)
It is in this atmosphere that the Swift Boat Veterans for Obfuscation released their advertisement attacks. And it is here that Kerry got stuck in a morass of goo. The natural flow in momentum toward the Bush campaign going into the convention was probably bumped up by roughly a week with this advertisement and ensuing controversy. How large a negative this has inflcited upon Kerry remains to be seen.
The convention is over, and we now get a good glimpse of the outer perimeters of a Bush victory. There are a series of polls out, and the Bush partisans have a couple of polls to support them, and their Kerry partisans have a few polls to support a contention that Bush’s “bounce” is modest.
In the meantime, the conventional wisdom amongst the arbiters of such have shifted from a tight-50/50 type race, started peaking toward “wow… it kinda looks like Kerry” — despite his inherent weaknesses, and is probably about to be set to “Bush victory.”
Charles Cook has continuously contributed the contrary view… when it was starting to look like Kerry, he posited it toward Bush, and when the swing started going toward Bush, he remarked on the fickleness of the arbiters of conventional wisdom who have their finger in the wind, he’s moved toward Kerry.
Is Kerry’s campaign in trouble? This is the natural ebb point to his campaign, but beyond that… I don’t really know. I see what looks to me like inherent weaknesses in his campaign. Also, I must say, if I were Kerry I would not have capitulated to John McCain on the anti-Swift Boat attack ad that used his image (McCain saying to Bush at a debate when the camera was off “Why are you doing this to me?”, Bush replying “Hey! It’s just politics.”) to drive home the greatest truth of the Swift Boat ad. It should be noted, after all, that John McCain is a Bush partisan. On the otherhand, there are limits to what some of the Kerry partisans want: “go on the offensive”, sure, but there is a line that the partisans sometimes just aren’t fully aware of.
And, on yet another hand, you can stare at his primary fight. Written off for dead, you will remember… the latest in a long series of campaigns where he earned the label of “strong closer.”
The horse race dynamics of the Reagan – Carter race, it should be said, was middling all the way to October. Not that anyone can seriously expect anything of that magnitude. Some convention notes from 1980: Carter’s convention speech belies the belief that he needed to tear down Reagan, and should Kerry win, history will record Bush’s speech in the same breath as Carter’s.
Remember too that through 2002 nobody could make heads or tails of the Senate race dynamic until the weekend before the election — when it became clear the war in Iraq would corral a modest, but easily construed as major Bush-coattail effect. Laura Bush has just said that the war wasn’t popular when Bush made the decision — the story of the Bush decision with Bush fretting over it is a lie, mind you. But hold on a minute there! That was the storyline of the anti-war faction: the polls showing an even split for the idea of a war in Iraq until it became clear that it was inevitable and “support the troops” became paramount and the media loves it, you know? At the time, the hawks would argue that America knows they need this war. I guess the storyline changes by convenience to fit into the “steady leader, won’t waver in the face of any trouble” storyline.
Never mind.
We’ll see if Bush successfully makes Kerry unacceptable to the one exurban underemployed Ohio resident who is the elusive swing voter. Bush has largely mailed in domestic affairs — all go to the base — and is selling himself on the “War on Terror”, shouting into a bullhorn, and the idea of “steadfast leadership” versus “wavering and flip flopping”, meaning “even if you disagree” (and polls tend to show an increasing slim majority believe it to be a mistake) “you know where I stand.”