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Tangled Up in Red and Blue

Bush may trail in national polls, but beware the electoral college

Will Bush's flag decal still get him into Heaven?

Among my own acquaintances, at least, I've noticed a new polarity lately between folks who still presume Bush cannot lose and others who think he's already beaten. They're both wrong--but the latter more palpably. Look past the national poll numbers that put Kerry 6-10 points ahead. On a state-by-state basis, W is still in a surprisingly strong position despite the many hits he's taken recently.   

Late last week Zogby released a poll that broke down Bush v. Kerry on the basis of 2000 results. In the Blue states won by Gore then, Zogby's numbers have Kerry up 46-45, a statistical dead heat. In the Red states that went for Bush before, he leads Kerry 51-39. Needless to say, this is markedly at odds with what other polls seem to be saying, but I'll take Zogby, who performed best not only in the waning days of the 2000 race but so far in this winter's primaries. It only underscores how absurd it was for Democrats to flock to Kerry over electability: There are half a dozen reasons Edwards would fare better in a number of southern and midwestern battleground states.

But every time I get myself halfway convinced that John Kerry could not win without a miracle, the armored doors of Bunker 1600 slide open and out rolls another stink bomb. The White House has already conceded that its forecast of 2.6 million new jobs created in 2004 is of dubious provenance--Chalabi again, perhaps?

It's become one of the cliches of the hour that Republicans are "scared," but Republicans--at least the ones who live in the Big House--are also being awfully stupid in a tactical sense. Last Friday Howard Kurtz reported that the Bush campaign will indeed sell the "Massachusetts liberal" and "Vietnam radical" lines hard against Kerry. I don't think very many people care to hear either. Maybe Karl Rove is privy to polling data that suggests it will make a difference in a couple of close states, but it's a little too early for fine-tuning the message to that degree. The only other sensible reason for going after Kerry on these grounds is to turn voters off and depress turnout--but again, I don't think it will work on a retail-politics basis. The epithet "liberal" has lost a lot of its sting while no one was looking, and Kerry's Vietnam record only begets other questions distinctly more unflattering to the president than to Kerry.

The more pressing question for Bush is whether he can arrest his own free-fall. If the Democrats and the media keep after him, it's hard to see any answer but "No." Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center confessed the other day, "I'm a little surprised by how negative people are toward Bush personally," and most of the chattering class seems similarly caught out. And it may keep spiraling down; there's an abundant store of scandals in the cellar (I suggested a few here), and at some point even "strong" Bush supporters--some 83 percent of his backers, according to a WashPost poll I wrote about last week--will begin to tune out or turn elsewhere.  

Nor are skeptics and undecideds likely to find the programmatic side of Bush's campaign inspirational: It's all tax cuts and terrorism. He doesn't exactly say, "If you roll back the tax cuts, then the terrorists win," but that's the spirit of the thing. Awfully thin gruel. But what else has he got to tout?

I watched Bush's speech tonight, and while I like to think I'm pretty good at casting a dispassionate eye toward political elocution, I could see nothing in it to excite anyone's imagination--not even the traditional GOP base, much less the fence-sitters. The big line near the end was, "We'll defend America, whatever it takes." I'm telling you, people don't want to hear that shit anymore. In pushing the memory of 9/11, Bush is leaning on glories that feel like ancient history now. More recent disasters, and mainly economic ones, are the lingua franca this season.

Obligatory Nader Survey

Do you really think this is going to mean a damn thing? My own sense is that no one is going to pay attention. Witness the fate of Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primaries. Not just partisans but onlookers are focused exclusively on the main event this time. But tell me if you think I'm wrong, and tell me what you think Nader is thinking.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 23, 2004 8:58 PM

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