Democratic strategists say Bush has made 'unmistakable' gains in August

[Kadie]

Democratic strategists say Bush has made 'unmistakable' gains in August

WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
Monday, August 30, 2004


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(08-30) 14:52 PDT NEW YORK (AP) --

President Bush has gained ground on Democrat John Kerry in the month of August because of "relatively small but unmistakable" shifts in the political environment, Democratic strategists said in a memo released Monday.

The polling memo by Democracy Corps, a group led by pollster Stan Greenberg and strategist James Carville, said the subtle gains by Bush have knotted the race again after Kerry had a slight advantage after the Democratic National Convention in late July.

"There is no doubt that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads (attacking Kerry's Vietnam service) have had an impact on the race," according to the Democracy Corps memo. Those attacks combined with the Summer Olympics have combined to "shift the focus away from Iraq and worrisome economic trends."

The Democracy Corps analysis averaged numerous national and state polls to come up with its assessment that Bush is doing slightly better against Kerry, a judgment supported more by internal measures such as issues and candidate qualities.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/08/30/politics1752EDT0723.DTL

[gratuitous]

1. A temporary fix from a temporary president

The Swifties' bolt has been shot, and while some were gulled into thinking it was a direct hit, it has missed its target badly. The Bush campaign would really like everyone to forget the Swifties, as well as their own abysmal record over the last four years.

Collective amnesia of the electorate is a poor campaign theme.

[phaseolus]

2. Wait 'til the debates...

Watching Kerry at the convention, I was struck at how well he turned the other side's talking points on their head & used them to his advantage. I believe he's capable of turning everything around in the next few months with similar judo.

People really don't like Bush, and if Kerry's smart he'll keep reminding them why. And, keep his own optimism thing going. Things can turn back our way, fairly easily...

[Born Free]

8. If you wait tile the debates, we lose

They will chew Kerry up , no one will listen, the smear campaign is working - the only way to stop it is to force the bush coward out of hiding, make him disclose his records and tell people what he did during the Vietnam War era. Those democrats that think everything can wait for the debate, where the issues will be finally discussed will see the same thing that happend in 2000, many people vote on feelings, not =issues and as long as the bush coward can pretend to have high morals he has an edge, the only way to defeat him is to debunk that myth and show him for the coward he is misleading Americans for his own poltical gain.

[goclark]

17. I am sad to say I agree with you

It took us two/three weeks to beat back Swift Boats.

Next up is the Anti War Record...two more weeks.

Next up, smear trial lawyers week

Are we ready for the debates and the smears that follow those by then?

Oops, I forgot, smear Kerry's record in congress week...are we at Nov. 2nd yet?

We should be in attack mode every second of every day until this election!

That is what I liked about the protest yesterday. They were right in the face of the Republican party. They stood in front of Fox News and told them "Fox Sucks" over and over again. They stood in front of MSG and said, " Bush Lied, Soldiers Died!"

That is what needs to happen until Nov. 2nd

Have you noticed that when Democrats get in their face they back down? I watched Novak and Carville the other day. FINALLY Corville started getting right in his face and let the truth roll off his lips. Novak backed down like a puppy.

They are bullies of the highest order. They look like bullies and they ARE bullies.

As my friend would say " treat um like they look."

[TaleWgnDg]

28. yup, Sunday's NYC anti-Bush protestors were . . .

awesome! Their appearance rang true. And wasn't the shouting about "Fox News SUCKS!" great?!! dammit, I love it.
:bounce:

[barb162]

31. not only that, but

a candidate can "win" the debates and still lose big in the actual election. Mondale V. Reagan as an example.

I saw a few polls and all are saying the same thing, Bush in the lead.
Kerry has to start fighting, attacking and really going at it. Forget the clean campaign routine, doesn't work against slugs like the RNC and swifties.

[FlaIndie]

36. Gore made up a lot of ground after the debates

He went from something like 5 or 7 down to taking the popular vote in the course of a couple of weeks. Bush has nothing to run on and he knows it. As soon as Kerry starts hitting him with the facts on live TV (no Karl Rove to feed him answers!), Bush will wilt like that resigned Virginia congressman's dick watching two women get it on. Sorry and no offense; I thought the joke would be funny. :)

[fearnobush]

15. There is only now, this is not a time to wait for the debates. Now is most

critical. This is the time to be very active for Kerry, every one you meet see and talk to who will listen, must be told the record straight. Bush's failed record. Focus on how he has mislead them, tell them how Dept of Labor report on Friday added 3 more million to the uninsured. Tell them that the poverty level has risen to 13%, tell them that Bush as lost over a million jobs since he took office when only one President in our history can claim that dark reality.
Now we must fight as if our freedom depended on it. The GOP convention will steer the media to the agenda this week so fight them too, email them. Tell them how pissed off you are at Bush taking advantage of 911, tell them how Rudy has done nothing for the victim's, how Bush fought the creation of the 911 commission etc.

Work hard.

[shanti]

22. someone noticed my kerry sticker

and struck up a convo. i always seem to speak to people who are pro-kerry or anti-bush, never the opposite.

[TaleWgnDg]

29. OMG . . . could it be???

that Kerry potential voters far out-number Dumbya potential voters? oh, wow! pssstttt, pass this around. ;-)

[coreystone]

16. Then three weeks of Bush "spinning the media"....

before November 2, 2004!

:kick:

[shanti]

21. do you think that the debates will go on?

i'm feeling sort of doubtful that chimpy would get himself into a battle of wits with kerry.

[bushwakker]

35. The debates - are you kidding?

What is it with people thinking The Debates will change everything? I heard the same crap in 2000 and we lost them - big time. Cheney is gonna make Edwards look like a child and AWOL will just skate away while alot of the attention focuses on the SBL's attacks on Kerry. Moderator's will ask about JK's service and ignore Bush's. Bush will be + 10 points after this week and the Kerry camp is comatose. We're looking not at a landslide but a pretty sound drubbing. Sorry. Get used to 4 more years.

[gasperc]

39. I'm not waiting for the debates, and if Kerry waits for them

we're fucked. Although, as I tracked the response to the SBVT ads, the Kerry camp issued press releases that evening and the next day. But obviously this was not enough. Even though the ad was a very minor buy, the media's replay of the ad provided market saturation. The Kerry camp has to put responses into hard core "visual statements" or 30-60seconds spots that the media will be forced to use as a balance response. Whether the Kerry camp was caught off guard by the small buy of the ad and the news media's saturation coverage is pretty unclear to me and alot of others. But the lesson is there, respond quickly, forcefully and mercilessly(Josh Marshall's advice) otherwise the Kerry campaign and the progressive movement will find ourselves in the dust bin of history

[markses]

3. The month when Kerry couldn't run ads because of the Repukes cynical

convention timing?

I'll take a dead even race with a failed incumbent at the beginning of Septmber. Damn straight. All lost ground is temporary, and we're even anyway. The real question is: Why isn't a popular war president easily electable? Why must a popular War President struggle for votes in September and October? Shouldn't it be a Reaganesque runaway?

Failed incumbent incompetent.

[lancdem]

6. Nice analysis

Bush's approval rating also is up in some polls to around 50 percent, which I attribute to Iraq and the economy being out of the news temporarily.

[Ohio rules]

9. Any guess on a bounce?

what are the predictions following the convention ?

[markses]

18. Bush will get an ephemeral and temporary 7% bounce

Moving him from 45% to 52%. Kerry will hold at 46%.

Polls will be back at even at 48%-48% within three weeks.

[lancdem]

4. Hey, someone else finally mentioned the Olympics

as a factor, as I've been saying. Also, Kerry ran no ads in August, which put him at a major disadvantage.

[Dancing_Dave]

5. Kerry started talking about the wrong war.

Kerry decided to talk about Vietnam instead of Iraq at his convention, and the Republicans have made him pay for that mistake!

Kerry needs to start talking about how he'll get us out of the mess Bush got us into in Iraq. It's the only way he can win.

[lancdem]

7. That was not a mistake

It's who he is. You can take issue with his campaign's response if you want, but I have no problems with him talking about his service.

[Turbo]

26. Unfortunately, the Vietnam advantage....

Any advantage John Kerry had in the Vietnam issue before today has been neutralized with all these Swiftie ads putting doubt in the minds of voters.

For Sen. Kerry, putting his Vietnam foot foreward as the main message was risky, considering that Sen. Kerry knew how viciously he spoke against his fellow soldiers back in 1971 after he came back from Nam.

I didn't see it at the time, but now I think it might have been a mistake to rely so heavily on Vietnam.

Because now it will be harder for Sen. Kerry to transition back to current issues that really matter with today's electorate.

It won't be impossible, but I'm afraid we lost three or four weeks. With only eight weeks till Nov. 2, we don't have the luxury of wasting time in this election.

[0rganism]

34. Huh? Kerry SUPPORTED his fellow veterans in 1971

I don't doubt that the rightwing media is spinning Sen. Kerry's antiwar activism as "viciously speaking against his fellow soldiers", but you should at least avail yourself of what he actually said before repeating their talking points.

You can get most of his actual testimony to congress here:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/20/1535232

Notice his lengthy discussion of how poorly the Vietnam Vets had it upon returning to the USA, including their high unemployment, disabilities, and stress disorders. John Kerry was not attacking his fellow soldiers, he was trying to save their lives. Remember this in the weeks to come.

[Only Me]

10. And I think he needs to use the voices of the soldiers that went to Iraq

and can report what it's been like for them and the innocent Iraqis.
I think he needs to make an ad that has the records of his injuries
as he shows the names of the thousands of severly wounded and dead.
Kerry's people need to shout to the hill tops and everywhere in between how the 'War president' has screwed up and left his people behind and all the NG that came back to no jobs.

Bush and his Administration has given us more than ample things to use against them....Kerry's team needs to start using it.

I think getting out is not enough anymore, we have to play dirty.
Kerry needs to put them on the offensive instead of him being on
the offensive.. Just my humble opinion.

[AnewerWay]

25. The only way?

Why not talk of free health care, housing, food and shelter for all?
Where are the liberals?

[Mike Daniels]

38. Sorry, but the voters don't care about war time service

Clinton, who chose not to serve in Vietnam beat two WW II combat veterans.

Do you really think given that piece of information that Kerry's service is going to pull any significant advantage over Bush's National Guard non-duty?

[marlakay]

11. Hoping 9-11 backfires on them!

I hope it bitch slaps them in the face!!

[Massacure]

12. This article states the obvious

It was expected that Bush would take advantage of the lag time betwen the conventions.

[Garion_55]

13. All of this was to be expected.

None of this surprises me, the way this whole thing is being played out.

I started playing scenarios in my head when kerry first announced.

Dean was a surprise. No one could have seen that coming. That whole thing was just a freak of politics. Something you just dont expect to see.

Minus dean, I looked at the field and saw almost immediately a kerry edwards ticket. elder statesman with the experience on top, young energetic will grow into the job and take over in 8 years VP.

Even when it looked the bleakest. Dean was up 20 points everywhere. Kerry was third or fourth. I didnt give up.

There may still be posts on here of me saying that i just didnt believe that when it was all said and done, that dems would choose anyone else over kerry if you looked at the whole of the man and who he was going to have to face in nov.

I was one of the few.

Then one day hope arrived in the form of Zogby.

HE (and only he of all the pollsters) said that there was movement big time in kerrys direction. No one on the talk shows could believe it. They already had polling match ups going between dean and bush. IT was over in their mind.

We all know the rest of that story.

So kerry came out on top, like i always believed that he would. Edwards joined the ticket, like i always thought he would.

The polling is playing out like i figured it would too.

Kerry up early (postive primary coverage). that alone should have scared the daylights out of rove. a popular war time incumbant doesnt fall behind in the polls before the other guy is even nominated. This time he is did cuz he is a failure and needs to go.

Kerry lead drops. race is tied till convention.

Kerry gets bounce. i figured 6-8. no way 10-15 like past elections. just not enough undecideds out there.

kerry lead drops. race tied again. Especially this year with kerry not spending any money in august. Isnt it strange that the swiftys chose then to arive on the scene? they didnt do it in any of his senate campaigns. didnt do it during the primaries when they could have knocked him out completely so there would be no chance at all he could be president. they didnt do it for all the months before the convention when he was undeclared.

no it was only right after the convention when he said he would spend no money, tone down his campaign a bit, that they appeared. amazingly enough right at the time during the whole campaign that they could have done the most damage to him and the most help to bush. pump bush up right before his convention. he gets another good boost coming out. he looks unstoppable.


their timing doesnt seem politically motivated at all.

right now we have just started the third quarter.

bush is going to get a little bump. he will probably be ahead in all the polls for the first time ever. rush and hannity will talk about how its over. they will be very giddy.

his lead will drop and it will be back to a tie game.

then the debates start.

thats fourth quarter. when people start watching. when the pressure starts to kick in.

In the end i really believe that bush is going back to texas. he is just too much of a failure and I just believe that even a lot of his supporters are going to know it when they walk in that booth and vote kerry no matter what they say now.

we did it once with his father and his father wasnt half as bad as this jerkoff.

just a matter of time now.

[wakfs]

19. Good post and some good points

You said "kerry lead drops. race tied again. Especially this year with kerry not spending any money in august. Isnt it strange that the swiftys chose then to arive on the scene? they didnt do it in any of his senate campaigns. didnt do it during the primaries when they could have knocked him out completely so there would be no chance at all he could be president. they didnt do it for all the months before the convention when he was undeclared.

no it was only right after the convention when he said he would spend no money, tone down his campaign a bit, that they appeared. amazingly enough right at the time during the whole campaign that they could have done the most damage to him and the most help to bush. pump bush up right before his convention."

Excellent point and I haven't seen this angle a whole lot in the coverage and counter-coverage of the whole Swift Boat nonsense.

I myself am getting increasingly worried that Kerry's ultracautious campaign thus far is letting Bush and his GOP surrogates define Kerry instead of Kerry relating Bush's policy failures to the declining fortunes of the middle class. And his idiotic explanation of his pro-Iraq war hasn't helped much either. I understand why he voted for it (let's face it, at that time he was just another spineless Democrat senator who voted as the wind blew, but I don't hold that against him), but most Americans will not.

Well, it's too late for major strategy changes at this point in the Kerry campaign. I believe, as you say, the fourth quarter will be key. Kerry really needs to impress in the debates. People watch the debates and make their final decision based on the outcome. The 2000 debates killed Al Gore (okay, more like the media's coverage of Gore's performances in the debates killed him).

The whole thing is frustrating to watch. But I remain hopeful of a positive outcome. And maybe a big surprise that splatters egg all over the mainstream media's collective face.

[demoman123]

14. It's just because he's been out on the campaign trail.

This started in August. The almost-nightly media coverage has given him a boost.

[MrPrax]

20. With friends like this who needs Big Media...

I guess it must be some brilliant strategy on the parts of 'partisan' pollers...

Could be be that Kerry is failling not because of the Swiftboat Ads and the Olympics, but because he is running a suspiciously terrible campaign...

Good article here raises a few points:

Kerry Could Squander Historic Opportunity

"The American presidential election on Nov. 2 is John Kerry's to lose. He very well may, so ineffective has he been thus far.

No contemporary incumbent president has been in so much trouble on so many fronts so early in the campaign as George W. Bush. The sins for which Lyndon Johnson quit, and Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were defeated, were minuscule by comparison."

etc...

http://www.maxlogan.com/siddiqui.0829.htm

[leesa]

24. He hasn't been in the least inneffective. This is a RW talking point that

Democrats are quite happy to parrot. Just like with Gore. Makes em feel so smart to regurgitate crap like this. Kerry is drawing crowds of 15000 and he is doing a poor job??

Our DINOs would love that it were so.

So MANY Dems were conned into saying and believing this about Gore and it was simply not true. We were TOLD it was the case like with every other bit of RW propaganda. We were TOLD Gore lost the debates. Of course he didn't lose the debates, the media simply called it for him and we just took it.

Cripes! When do Democrats wise up?

[leesa]

23. OK so they are averaging RW media polls...hmmmm..

More "Democratic" spokemen helping us out with bogus polls.

[Seabiscuit]

27. "Unmistakable - MY ASS!"

Such polls are pure unadulterated BS. And the Neo-Con spin on them is even worse.

Michael Moore was right - the pollsters are using an historically outmoded system - what's happening now is that new grassroots voters have sprung to life in opposition to the Bush regime and the polls don't even count these tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

[WhereIsMyFreedom]

32. Their measure of 'likely voters'

Is probably not very accurate this year. I expect a lot of people who haven't ever voted before (and therefore not considered to be likely voters) to be angry enough to do so this year.

[dweller]

30. Dem strategists?

what did he last, 5 days, a week here?

for what? An education?
dp

[JSJ]

33. with friends like these dem strategists...

...who needs friends? Do you think the republicans would ever say that democrats made 'unmistakable gains' on anything, anytime? Fucking quislings!

[llmart]

37. It'll all come down to turnout....

If Dems come out in record numbers to vote and not sit at home on their hands, then Kerry will win. We've got to get people out to vote, especially young people. Most young people can't relate to all the old farts at the Republican convention or their agenda.

[goclark]

40. It all comes down to us NOT letting them steal this election!

That is what it comes down to.

We know we have the voters but do we have the VOTE COUNT!

The most important thing that we can do now is to stop the SMEAR at the Ballot Box.

They are already trying to steal California! Have you read the threads? The fix is in . The fix is in.

We can all sit back and say they will never do that again.
Yes they will! They have had 4 years to fine tune their techniques and put their people in the right places.

Did you know that Jeb and Katleen's "friend" was hired by Arnold?

Did you know that,it's here at DU. I saw it yesterday.

Wake up America!