Back to the Beginning
Sorry for the absence of posts over the last two days. I was at this Fiscal New Year party, and things got out of hand, and the bail bondsman wouldn't answer his cell phone.... No, I'm joking. I've been moving since Thursday, and am finally back online amidst boxes, cleaning supplies, and a menagerie of disoriented cats and dogs.
Bailing out of the chattering classes for a couple of days enables me to hit the refresh button and look at the presidential race without the distraction of all the post-debate spin. It looks like, at long last, we're back to where things stood in April or May, before the pre-Boston Kerry Surge and the post-New York Bush Surge had people thinking this thing might not be a nail-biter after all. Kerry's focus is Bush's record at home and abroad. Bush's focus, just as it was in the spring, is the endless pounding of Kerry as a flip-flopper. Bush's approval ratings have gone up slightly, but the closer we get to November 2, the harder it will be to raise them further. And it continues to appear this will be a high-turnout election where Democrats have an advantage in the ability to selectively boost turnout.
The only enduring trend since the spring that favors Bush is the narrowing of the battleground. Kerry has more "must-win" battleground states than the incumbent, including one (Wisconsin) where Bush seems to have a really surprising lead. Ohio and Florida remain the big prizes. There's some evidence Kerry has closed the gap in Ohio after a couple of weeks of polls showing a large Bush lead. And no one really knows what's going on in water-logged and distracted Florida.
The one thing that's clear about the two remaining presidential debates, and the veep debate on Tuesday, is that Kerry and Edwards have an inherently easier mission than the incumbents. They must simply rebut the flip-flop charge, without falling into the trap of the GOP's backup attack theme, that they are tax-and-spend big government liberals who are weak on defense. Bush and Cheney must deal with their record, and with the objective reality that record has produced. That's much more of an immovable object.
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