Tuesday, September 28, 2004

On Bush's "Aura"

Slate on Bush's invincibility stratergery.



Media myth #1: Bush had to fight off McCain in 2000 GOP primaries. Yes, Bush had to deal with the pest in 2000, but as soon as the race got to states that Didn't let Democrats vote in GOP primaries, the race was over. Conservatives wanted Bush to win and voted for him in droves. He easily won the nomination.



Anyway, back to the present. Yeah, it probably was a mistake for Bush to go to California in the last days of the 2000 campaign, but he isn't going to make that mistake again. This political operation is too disciplined for that. Bush with polls increasingly showing blue states up for grabs and leaning Bush (Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, Minnesota) it makes sense to go to those places. Plus, there's more than a month until election day.



With that all said, sure, Bush and Rove want to show a strong candidate and depress the Dem vote by citing large margins in many polls. Bush may not be up by as large a margin as some of the polls show, but there's no doubt he has a lead from anywhere from 3 to 7 points. If these polls show Bush maintaining his lead going into Nov. 2 then the race will be over. The article notes, undecideds want to vote for a winner and that will be helpful, but as elections go, turnout is going to be key. With the Dems planning vote stealing operations all over the country (ask John Fund) and Dem lawyers gearing up to challenge ever military absentee ballot cast, depressing Dem voter turnout will be a key to a Bush victory. Certainly, having put up the worst major party presidential candidate in history will not help voter turn out either. As I've been saying for awhile, Kerry is the Dem's Bob Dole (without the winning personality). It was his turn. None of the Dems best and brightest were willing to run this time (read Hillary and that's about it) against Bush and as we heard during the entire primary season, Kerry was "electable." The problem for that mindset was that...well, it was applied to John Kerry, who is electable in Massachusetts only, and only as long as Teddy Kennedy says so.



With the spate of Kerry campaign advice columns in the MSM and lefty blogs appearing everyday, the "Kerry has finally found his voice" and he's a good closer rhetoric, plus the candidate calling for an end to advertising, demanding a ton of debates and claims that the polls are not accurate (because the young people that aren't likely to vote anyway and who only use cell phones aren't being polled) and the only poll that counts is on election day stuff, you know that the campaign is over.



It's definitely Bush's to lose. If he stays on message and stays disciplined, he will win. Kerry will come off as a pompous ass in the debates and it will be over. It's not that Bush is invincible, its just that Kerry can't beat him.