Kerry's Desperation

More and more, it seems, the sounds emanating from the Kerry campaign are ones of desperation. With the exception of the Investors Business Daily, all the polls are showing a lead for Bush from 4% to 11%. The Iowa Electronic Markets and Tradesports are showing prices for the Bush contract (i.e. Bush winning the election) at 3 month highs. State by state polls are even less encouraging for the Kerry campaign. Polipundit points to a new Qunnipiac poll showing that even in New York, Kerry's lead has fallen from 18 points to 6 points, while another poll shows a 51%-46% Bush lead in Florida.

Seeing these polls the Kerry campaign has decided to go on the offensive, attacking Bush on Iraq and on the economy. Even with things looking grim in Iraq the past few days Bush maintains a lead on that issue, having successfully linked it to the War on Terror where his lead over Kerry is in the high teens. This does not seem like an issue that Kerry will be able to win on.

Kerry is thus left to attack Bush on the economy, where Bush's lead is pretty slim. But even here, Kerry runs into problems. By all measures, the economy is doing pretty well; unemployment is at 5.4% and more people are employed than ever, as judged by the household survey (a more inclusive survey than the commerce dept's payroll numbers); homeownership is at all-time highs; and even the deficit - the main avenue of attack for Kerry - will be smaller than originally forecast, validating Bush's economic plan of cutting taxes to stimulate growth, which in turn increases government revenue (maybe Arthur Laffer was actually correct about the Curve bearing his name).

What then is Kerry to do? That Air National Guard issue doesn't seem to have panned out for him, and if it is shown that those documents came from the DNC or Kerry campaign, there will be a tremendous backlash. Kerry is left to rant in a vein reminiscent of post-meltdown Al Gore. This may energize his base, but will turn off the swing voters.

There is still seven weeks to go, and the debates start in two weeks. But according to Dick Morris, even these will probably not help Kerry for the simple reason that nobody likes him.

But worse, the poll shows that Kerry must face a basic problem: His own voters don't like him very much.

The Fox News poll asked Kerry supporters if their vote for the Democrat could best be described as motivated by support for Kerry (41 percent) or by opposition to Bush (51 percent). By contrast, Bush voters emphatically say, by 82-13, that they are voting for the president rather than against the challenger.

This puts Kerry in a tough position in the coming debates. He has no real base of support and any attenuation of the dislike his voters feel for Bush will weaken him substantially. All Bush has to do is to persuade a few Kerry voters to stop disliking him, and he can get their votes. There is no residual affection for the Democrat to get in the way of their switching to the president.

A few more weeks of Bush being able to maintain this lead, and this race is over. The Democrats have run one of the most incompetent campaigns in recent memory.