Iraq and the Polls

Real Clear Politics has an excellent analysis of the state of the Presidential campaign. A number of state polls has come out recently showing Bush leading in a number of swing states. And despite things in Iraq seeming worse every day, Bush's numbers continue to improve.

Iraq has always been the defining issue in this campaign and despite John Kerry's best attempts over the last few months to turn it against Bush by attacking from every imaginable angle, it hasn't worked. Maybe that will change as the violence continues into October and Kerry sharpens his critique, but I wouldn't count on it.

The reason, I think, is very simple: America hates losers. I don't mean that John Kerry is a "loser" in the stylistic sense - though he does come off a bit that way when we see pictures of his gangly frame in spandex bike shorts, windsurfing or throwing a baseball.

What I mean is that when it comes to the biggest issue in this campaign, Iraq, John Kerry doesn't leave the impression with voters that he really wants to win the war. Everything we see, feel and know about John Kerry says his heart is not in this war, nor has it really been in any war.

Kerry in his speech yesterday, and his chief foreign policy adviser Richard Holbrooke have explicitly compared Iraq to VietNam. Besides the hardcore loony left base of the Democratic Party, Americans do not believe this and don't like those comparisons. His big, new, foreign policy speech - which promises to be the core of his campaign going forward - appeals to no swing voters. He is preaching to the converted, and when he hears the applause of these converted he and his advisers seem convinced that the rest of the country also thinks this way. They are wrong, and the polls are showing it every day.