Kerry’s people are happy about his position in the polls and in the public’s mind after the Democratic National Convention left Kerry with a “negative bounce”.
Democrats were dismissive. “We’re extremely pleased with where John Kerry and John Edwards are,” Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry’s campaign manager, said Monday.
Two other post-convention polls released Monday also showed Kerry failing to get the traditional boost from the convention. One showed his support unchanged; the other had him up 3 percentage points among likely voters. Neither found Bush gaining ground.
Some of the same voices who confidently predicted at least a modest bounce for Kerry last week suggested theories for why that didn’t happen: The Democrats miscalculated by limiting the partisan bashing of Bush. Or perhaps in this polarized electorate there’s simply no one left to persuade. Or Kerry could still benefit from a delayed bounce.
Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t be happy about my candidate not getting a much needed boost from increased media exposure froma convention built up around the idea that you’re the top guy for the upcoming job. Those Kerry people are crafty craftsmen, but even if they pull out all the stops–and I think the only thing that would work here is to have Kerry levitate, really levitate–I can’t imagine him getting any more of a boost. The problem is, he’s just not that interesting, exciting, or worthwhile.
Let’s face it–this election is about which guy we believe will be better at sending our guys to kill the bad guys–sure there are other issues, but none more important or engaging. Something about protecting the country from enemies foreign tends to grab people’s attention. What’s Kerry’s schtick? I’ll hand control over to those mincers at the UN.
Bush, on the other hand, sends out thousands of our guys to kill thousands of the bad guys. And because we’re good at killing bad guys, that’s generally been favourable for him. Go troops!
Now that the Democrats have blown their wad and Kerry’s still lagging behind, I guess there’s only one thing left to do: smear campaign. Involving the Bush twins and that midget from Jackass.
Hey, the Democrats can dream.
Carnival of the Vanities #98
<Alternately Drunk and Sober Multi-day Post> It’s the 98th Carnival of the Vanities During summer in America one sees carnivals springing up all over the country, and, at least here in California, carnivals mean one thing: Drugs. Lots of drugs….
A little devil’s advocate from CNN.com:
“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.”
My thoughts are that these polls are running close enough that when you consider the margin of error, the only thing they tell you is that it’s probably close.
AND Kerry’s schtick is also to increase the size of our troops and try to bring home some of these reserves and guard that have been deployed far too long AND he wants to increase benefits for veterans, which from my observation is needed.
As I make my decision, in my mind the convention gave Kerry/Edwards a boost, but we’ll see how the Republican convention goes.
Carnival of the Vanities #98
<Alternately Drunk and Sober Multi-day Post> It’s the 98th Carnival of the Vanities During summer in America one sees carnivals springing up all over the country, and, at least here in California, carnivals mean one thing: Drugs. Lots of drugs….
Okay, I’ll grant you that John Kerry’s already had the bounce that conventions normally give a candidate.
But if that’s the case, then it doesn’t speak well for the DNC, which, from all reports, went off swimmingly. And the Dems still have to contend with the RNC.
Kerry’s goals of increasing the size of our troops (how? forced draft? waivers?) is certainly laudable, as is increased benefits.
But what good are those benefits if we sacrifice Iraq and Afghanistan to get them?
Cool – the twins know Wee-man? ;-)
Heh. I hope not. Could spell trouble for Bush if they do.
Well, I’d be suprised if that star-studed, way to expensive media circus did much of anything to help Kerry Edward’s popularity.
Let’s face it: You can’t dress up milk toast. You can have the most dynamic speakers and the funniest commeidians that make the grossest jokes about the current president’s name. You can preempt my favorite shows on tv, and use up the first ten minutes of national news coverage, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kerry Edwards is a borring candidate.
He’s the Al Gore of this year’s election.
Boring is not always worse. And with a wife like Teresa, and Edwards as VP, I don’t think it’s so boring.
No, but Kerry/Edwards is not only boring, but they also manage to say a whole lot of nothing everything either one opens their mouths. Kinda like Heinz ketchup, you don’t get much out of the bottle, and when you do, it doesn’t taste any better than the generic stuff. Lackluster is the best word I can think of to describe their campaign. It’s being kept alive artificially by a media and party with no faith in either but the extreme desire to see Bush lose, even at the cost of their ideology being tainted by such a searingly uninvigorating pair. Should Kerry and Edwards win in November, it could well set back the Democrats by 12 years or more. Look what happened with Carter back in ’76.
As Red State writes, the Democrats have nominated an epistemological zero.