No Bounce?

[The Reaper]

Saw the Dems' talking heads crowing about a 4 point post-convention bounce this past weekend.

Maybe not. He may have actually lost ground.

Some positives and negatives for each camp, but I strongly expect not what the Dems expected, whatever their public pronouncements.

Watch for the numbers after the Republican Convention, barring any swings due to news from the GWOT or the economy.

Note underlined portion of this CNN report, not exactly a conservative mouthpiece.

TR


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...nce/index.html

Poll: No 'bounce' for Kerry so far
Bush and Democratic nominee still running neck and neck
Sunday, August 1, 2004 Posted: 8:04 PM EDT (0004 GMT)

Sen. John Kerry speaks at the Democratic convention last week. A new poll shows little post-convention "bounce" for the presidential challenger.

SPECIAL REPORT

(CNN) -- The race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry is as close as it has ever been, even after the Democratic National Convention last week, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Sunday.

The poll -- conducted Friday and Saturday, after Kerry's acceptance of the Democratic nomination Thursday night -- found the senator from Massachusetts running slightly ahead of Bush among registered voters but slightly behind among likely voters.

In each case, the difference between the two men was less than the margin of error, making the results a statistical tie.

Although the poll brought some good news for Kerry, it suggested that the convention helped mobilize voters on the opposite side as well.

Of the 1,011 adult Americans interviewed, 916 identified themselves as registered voters and 763 said they were likely voters.

The registered voters surveyed favored Kerry over Bush 50-47, a slight change from 49-45 found in a similar poll conducted two weeks ago.

The likely voters polled favored Bush 50-47, whereas two weeks earlier they had favored Kerry 49-47.

The margin of error in each case was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Further polls in the coming days will help determine what effect the convention may have had on the race.

The figures from this poll supported Democrats' statements leading up to the convention that Kerry would likely not see a "bounce," the term for a temporary increase in a candidate's support after a significant event. Democrats said the Kerry campaign was already riding a bounce going into the convention.

Kerry's campaign argued that challengers historically run behind incumbents by about 15 points heading into a convention. Instead, Kerry entered the convention already polling neck and neck with Bush.

Also, Kerry chose his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, earlier than any previous presidential hopeful, and received the bounce that usually accompanies that decision well in advance of the convention.

Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said the poll was "interesting to note, but it is just a snapshot."

"It's heartening, quite frankly, for this moment," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "But by tomorrow, of course, we'll realize that anything can change from day to day and that we have to continue to work hard virtually every day."

The poll suggested the convention boosted Kerry's standing on several key measures -- but often not at Bush's expense.

Kerry's favorability rating edged up slightly, to 58 percent among registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It was at 56 percent two weeks ago. But Bush's rating rose as well, to 52 percent from 51 percent, with the same margin of error.

Kerry appeared to gain slightly on the question of who is more honest and trustworthy, with 48 percent of all those interviewed choosing Kerry and 43 percent choosing Bush. Two weeks ago, they were tied at 42 percent each.

But 55 percent of all respondents said Bush does not flip-flop on issues, while only 33 percent said Kerry does not. And 51 percent said they consider Bush the stronger and more decisive leader. Only 42 percent said that of Kerry.

Kerry is far out in front of Bush on the question of who would unite the country. Fifty-two percent of all those interviewed said Kerry would, while only 39 percent said Bush would.

Fifty-one percent of all respondents said Kerry has an optimistic vision, while only 40 percent said Bush does. And 53 percent said Kerry cares about people like them, while only 38 percent said that about Bush.

Although some Republicans ridiculed Kerry for focusing so much on his military service during the convention, 42 percent of all respondents said that service makes it more likely they will vote for him. But 41 percent said it made no difference.

A majority of all those interviewed said they believe Kerry would handle the economy better. On that issue they favored Kerry over Bush 54-43.

On the Iraq issue, little significant change was apparent. Kerry edged out Bush on Iraq, 49-47, in the current poll. But two weeks ago Bush was ahead on the Iraq issue 49-44, and the results of both questions fell within the margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Kerry may have gained some ground on terrorism, but Bush remains the front-runner on that issue.

Two weeks ago, poll respondents said they preferred Bush to lead the war against terror 56-38. In the latest poll, they still favored the president 54-42.

The current poll suggested Democrat-leaning voters were more enthusiastic about the race, and therefore more likely to vote.

But enthusiasm among Democrats already was high, and the poll suggested the four-day Democratic convention energized Republicans as well.

Seventy-four percent of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting than usual, up from 68 percent two weeks earlier.

Sixty-one percent of Republicans said they were now enthusiastic about the race, up from 51 percent.

And independent candidate Ralph Nader proves a continuing concern for Kerry.

When Nader was offered as an option, 3 percent of registered voters left Kerry's column to support the consumer advocate -- bringing Kerry down to a tie with Bush, 47-47. Two percent of likely voters chose Nader, increasing Bush's lead over Kerry to 50-46. Those results are all within the margin of error.

When all poll respondents were asked who they think will win the race, the result was a 47-47 tie between Bush and Kerry.

[rubberneck]

This spells big time trouble for Kerry. The person who wins this election will be the person who can win the hearts and minds of independents since both sides are polarized.

The fact that he didn't gain any traction or lost ground during the convention tells me that those who haven't made up their mind weren't impressed with John Kerry's makeover. If Bush gives a strong performance at the RNC convention and handles Kerry in the debates he will win this one going away.

Bare in mind that no war time President has ever lost an election. Kerry hasn't given the public any reason to believe that he will be an improvement. It is shaping up to be a very long fall/winter for the Democrats.

[lrd]

The Opinion Journal didn't seem very impressed either.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110005434

CAMPAIGN 2004

The Patriot Act
Why John Kerry's acceptance speech could cost him the election.

BY PAUL A. GIGOT
Monday, August 2, 2004 12:01 a.m.

BOSTON--The Democrats put on an impressive show here last week, wrapping their candidate in red, white and khaki. Walking around the FleetCenter, I couldn't find a single Democrat, whether delegate or journalist, who didn't think John Kerry had wrapped up the election with his revival of "liberal patriotism." And maybe they're right. But if things look different after Nov. 2, the seeds of defeat will have been sown on Thursday night, with the Kerry speech that went on forever but said too little.

Not that I don't appreciate Mr. Kerry's strategy. Like the other Democrats here, he and his strategists believe they've all but won. They think the voters have already decided to fire President Bush, so Democrats didn't need to make the case themselves. Their task was merely to present Mr. Kerry as a safe alternative. Then come November, as in 1980 and 1992, the undecided will break largely for the challenger and Mr. Kerry will realize his lifelong ambition.

So they staged a convention that was all biography and flags. Don't propose a new idea because it might create a political target. Make the campaign instead about Mr. Kerry's life, or at least that part of it before 1984 when he entered the Senate. And sound very tough on terrorism. On the latter point, I had to rub my eyes sometimes to make sure these were Democrats. Some of the rhetoric was so hawkish I half expected Donald Rumsfeld to show up. "You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you," said John Edwards about "al Qaeda and the rest of these terrorists."

Whatever happened to all that shouting over the last year about Iraq? What about the reckless folly of pre-emption, the "illegality" of the war because we haven't found WMD, and the necessity of U.N. approval? Last week all that vanished. Joe Wilson and Paul Krugman were kept in undisclosed locations, while someone must have slipped Howard Dean a Prozac.

In his speech and the party platform, Mr. Kerry's disagreements with Mr. Bush on Iraq were distilled to two: He'll never "mislead" the country into war, and he'll persuade (somehow, but don't ask for details) more of the world to "share the burden." The Democrat said "I know what I have to do in Iraq" without saying what else he'd do differently than Mr. Bush. A Rip Van Winkle who returned last week after a year away would have concluded that the great Iraq debate was over, and the neocons had won.

Yet the very vagueness of Mr. Kerry's promises is what gives the Bush campaign a chance to counterattack. Especially if you re-read his Thursday speech, it is not nearly as muscular as it tried to sound. Its hawkishness was mostly personal, more or less stopping in 1970 in the Mekong Delta. My guess is that this is all by design, since the last thing Mr. Kerry wants is a debate about his own antiterror policies. He wants to compare medals, not philosophies.

The challenge for the Bush campaign is therefore to force a genuine and more specific debate about national security. That means, for starters, getting beyond Vietnam once and for all. Some conservatives think they can still score points by talking about Mr. Kerry's antiwar record after Vietnam, but this is a losing hand. Winning three purple hearts trumps tossing ribbons over a fence. In the autumn debates, Mr. Bush could learn from Bill Clinton's treatment of Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush and praise Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service, before pivoting to say the real issue is what he would do as president.

And it is here where Mr. Kerry's Senate record becomes important. Most politicians want voters to forget what they did as younger men. The 60-year-old Mr. Kerry wants voters to forget what he did after he turned 40. "I ask you to judge me by my record," Mr. Kerry said on Thursday--and then promptly said almost nothing else about it. "Something tells me you'll see that line in a TV ad somewhere," says one Bush strategist. And rightly so. Nineteen years in the Senate are surely a better guide to presidential behavior than four months in Vietnam.

To make this point, however, Mr. Bush will have to do better than his weekend rhetoric that Mr. Kerry "has thousands of votes" in the Senate "but few signature achievements." Mr. Kerry isn't running for the Senate anymore, he's running for the White House. And if he did nothing in the Senate, then by definition he did nothing for voters to worry about. The better argument is that Mr. Kerry's votes were consistently dovish and wrong and are thus a harbinger of weakness if elected. While he now praises Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s Mr. Kerry fought every one of the Gipper's successful policies.

Mr. Kerry's speech provided new targets too. His main vow was that "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to." This would have ruled out Kosovo, Bosnia and Haiti--three military actions the Senator endorsed. Not to mention World War I and Korea. This is a repudiation of pre-emption, but worse it sounds like a return to the pre-9/11 policy of waiting until terrorists hit us, rather than taking the war to the terrorists on their turf. This is a debate Mr. Bush should also want to have.

How odd, too, that in 46 minutes Mr. Kerry couldn't manage a single line lauding U.S. forces for liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. He devoted paragraphs to praising his comrades from Vietnam (and thus himself), but he couldn't acknowledge just once that our current military sacrifices are for a just cause. I suspect this also reflects his desire to avoid arguing over Iraq, on which he has been so consistently inconsistent.

The speech "gives us a chance to have a debate with him over Iraq, because he has an unsustainable position," says a senior Bush strategist. Mr. Kerry wants to criticize the war but won't say if he regrets his original vote for it. "Over the next 90 days, he's going to be forced to say, 'I agree that we should have gone to war,' or not."

The irony in all of this is that it is Mr. Kerry who claims to be a man who sees "complexities." But from here to November he wants to avoid any debate over specific security cases. To quote another Democratic nominee from Massachusetts, he wants the election to be about "competence, not ideology." And that candidate also had a lead in July 1988.

Unlike Michael Dukakis, however, Mr. Kerry isn't about to defeat himself, and he has built what he hopes will be a political Kevlar vest called patriotism. For Mr. Bush to win, he now has to convince voters that there is more to his own record--and much more to fighting terrorism--than waving the flag.

Mr. Gigot is the Journal's editorial page editor.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Gypsy]

I'd like to think the reason for a lack of bounce, or actual loss of ground, is that more and more people are seeing this guy for what he is. A flip flopping self serving person who will put himself and his ego before the Country...time and time again.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Part of my assessment of this election was that Kerry inevitably will implode. The convention shows how that has started. I had dinner with two libs tonight, and both of them were talking about how Kerry just isn't a good candidate. One said that Bush will win just because it is difficult to unseat an incumbent in wartime.

I think the Dem convention was horrible. I'm sure Kerry will sue someone for malpractice when he loses.

The GOP has a major opportunity coming up. They had better not screw it up!

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
I'm sure Kerry will sue someone for malpractice when he loses.

Well, he won't have to go far to find a lawyer.

TR

[Bravo1-3]

I don't know if any of you saw Kerrys performance today on the campaign trail, but it was PATHETIC.

He's saying the the President isn't moving fast enough on (last week he was "ignoring") the 9-11 findings. According to him, if he were president, he'd just rush right in and do everything on the list. I'm sure someone would eventully figure out how to integrate everything into the machine before Billarys daughter is running for President.

Now, my above comments may seem a bit extreme (with the "rush right in" thing) but I was not alone when I saw the speech, and I was not the only person that got that impression. More than that, as near as I can tell, I was the only Republican in the room.

I have a bottle of Bookers that says Bush by 13% +/- 2 points.












(Any of you 18D's think I should stop drinking if my bottle of Bookers says that )

[Radar Rider]

Candidate Kerry is not really doing enough to convince potential voters that he is a better alternative (or an alternative at all) to President Bush. He talks and talks, but hasn't proposed anything substantial or radical (changewise). The democRAT party can convince itself all that it wants that it is a united party; my view is that all the RICH people are united. Essentially, the poor and underadvantaged aren't even being addressed. Good for US!

President Bush isn't always right (no one is), but I'll be damn glad to have him as my Commander-In-Chief for 4 MORE YEARS!

How about a bet about how much he'll win with? I'll send out the price. If he loses, ain't nobody getting anything!

[D9 (RIP)]

Another interesting theory being bandied about regarding the bounce is that with very few undecided voters on either side at this point, neither campaign is going to get a bounce because there's not an undecided middle the way there has been in many previous campaigns. I would have to agree that from my personal experiences, the electorate appears more polarized now than it has been at any time I can recall. Especially among the Dems, who for the first time in my memory, seem united around a central cause - defeat Bush. I think the Republican Convention will tell all. If Bush get's a bounce, it blows this theory out of the water. If he doesn't get much of one either, then we could be in for a very close race.

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Well, he won't have to go far to find a lawyer.

TR

I received this e-mail unsolicited last week. Did you get it RL?

THE DAVIS GROUP

July 27, 2004

Kerry Fundraising Comes To an End

The astounding run of 200 million dollars is a record for a non-incumbent candidate for president. History will record this feat as a way station to the presidency for John whose decision to bypass government funding was a great decision and isn’t that what great presidents do? Make great decisions? My bias shows here. Not only do I think that John will be president but I think he will be a great president.

His speech in acceptance of the Democratic Party nomination will be one of the gems heralded by posterity. Pundits will be comparing it to William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold� speech, Roosevelt’s “Nothing to fear but fear�, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. This speech will be a spellbinder. Don’t miss it.

The Davis Group, starting last January, has mailed, E-mailed, and faxed more than 20,000 Kerry fundraising letters most of them to lawyers at prominent law firms. This will end when John accepts the nomination and accepts 75 million dollars in government funding which precludes any further fund raising by John’s fundraisers.

The Davis Group will continue to serve as a conduit between John Kerry and the legal community. Though no one else seems to have pointed this out, this is the first time, at least in modern history, that two attorneys face two non-attorneys in a presidential race. It is also clear that Bush attempts to circumvent the courts as well as limit the amount of recovery that may be received in class-action suits. Clearly, Bush is not someone any lawyers should vote for because, at heart, he does not reflect their interests.

It is only when lawyers take on the coloration of their clients that you see lawyers colluding with Bush to circumvent environmental laws, anti-trust laws and laws pertaining to basic constitutional rights.

In any event, The Davis Group, though no longer able to raise funds for John Kerry, will continue to participate as a conduit of democratic ideals (I say this with some sadness because the 200 million dollar fundraising drive for John ranks with Dewey Canyonti in my all time great memory bank). If you want to help me with a small contribution to cover expenses it will be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,

Jim Davis

The Davis Group
116 Norfolk Drive
East Hampton, NY 11937

Regarding his judgment that the only lawyers who could possibly support Bush are those bought and paid for by evil corporations, I will put that up there with his predictions for Kerry's speech.

D9's "no one bounces" theory is getting a fair amount of play. If true, that should be of concern to the President. A Kerry convention bounce followed by a Bush convention bounce would at least mean people are paying attention and open-minded. If almost everyone has made up his mind, then Bush supporters have to be concerned that he does not have an edge already. Because then it will come down to turnout and any little immediate pre-election event (like the DUI story in 2000) that causes a shift of a few points. The Democrats will spend a lot of money on turnout, and will mobilize ostensibly non-partisan groups like the NAACP to help. And there is always the possibility of a little October surprise on the Democrat side, like say Nader dropping out immediately before the election.

[The Reaper]

AL:

Concur with your assessment.

What about the Dem's attorneys attempting to subvert election laws, the Second Amendment, Tort Reform, etc?

The only thing that really concerns me would be Nader bailing at the last minute and throwing his support to Heinz-Kerry.

I strongly expect the press breaking negative anti-Bush stories at the last minute. The good news may be that the skeletons are all out of Bush's closet by now, Kerry has not had the same scrutiny.

We can also expect the Dems to turn out every constituent possible, including convicted felons (again) and the deceased (again).

Not a done deal by any stretch, but it also occurs to me that the "no bounce for either" line is something you have to say if you went first and got none. We will see after the Republican convention. If Bush gets a decent bounce, I think it signals the beginning of the end for Kerry.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

[Airbornelawyer]

There is already an effort to make the story of the Republican convention the disruption to the city rather than the convention itself. I also have a feeling that convention television coverage will be caught between the Olympics and the premiere of the fall television season.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Bush will announce UBL's head on a platter when he gives his convention speech.

I also think if he's losing late, Cheney will step aside for McCain.

[Blackjack78]

Or Powell.