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Edited on Sun Sep-05-04 06:01 AM by JDWalley
I can hardly ever recall the sort of group panic I've been seeing here since Thursday. A bit of clear thinking is needed now, more than ever.
First of all, I have no doubt Bush got a sizable bounce from the convention. One poll with an 11-point lead might be a bad data point; two such polls are hard to argue with. Spending time trying to poke holes in their methodology is pointless wishful-thinking, as is seeking out other polls (most of which were taken before the convention) with results you like more. And imploring people to "ignore the polls," as Knute Berger observed, is a good sign of an already-lost campaign.
No, there's no reason to suppose that Bush doesn't have a lead, even a double-digit lead, at this point in time. Why should anyone be surprised? We just got over a week-long infomercial for Bush, and even those who didn't turn in to cable surely caught the "highlights" on network news or in their local newspaper. The RNC was put together by operatives with years of experience, political "smarts," and almost unlimited reserves of cash. Would it be sensible to expect them to do an incompetent job in hawking their "product?" Hardly! For most of one week, the Republicans got to paint the picture they wanted, cast the world according to their colors, present their candidate as a near comic-book superhero, and envelop the "consumer" in a show whose every nuance was designed to impel said consumer to "buy" that candidate. Should we be surprised that they did the job well?
The thing about convention bounces, though, is that eventually the convention ends and fades from memory. Voters find they aren't living in the virtual reality of Madison Square Garden, but in the real world where their wages are stagnating, their boss is demanding they come in to work this weekend, their co-workers' jobs are being off-shored, and their gas prices are soaring back into the two-dollar-plus range. Not to mention a world where American soldiers keep dying in Iraq, and the White House's fantasy of a New American Century is farther away than ever.
Prior to the Republican big show, polls indicated the nation was almost evenly split, with most giving Kerry a slight lead. Even more importantly, key indicators were going against Bush -- the number of those who believed he was doing a good job, that he deserved to be re-elected, and that the nation was heading in the right direction were below 50%. Most importantly, they had been there for many months. It is possible, in the immediate aftermath of the RNC's dazzle, that some or all of these indicators have climbed into positive territory. But will they stay there? These indicators are opinions that have taken a long time to develop, and that have formed over months if not years of dissatisfaction with the real world people are experiencing. Is it possible that something that happened at the RNC was so powerful as to change all that, not just for this week but long-term? Dubious at best. Once the convention "glow" has worn off, people are going to return to the reality of their lives in Bush's America, and there's no reason to suspect they're going to find it more palatable than they did one or two months ago. I would be stunned to see the polls continue to show a sizable Bush lead, no matter what the margin you may hear this week.
And that's why it's not time to panic. I've seen a lot of silly, wishful thinking on DU in the past forty-eight hours. Don't hang your hopes on a potential scandal, such as the upcoming book about the Bush family -- if we have to count on that, we're grasping at straws, and I don't see us in that position yet. Nor is there any point in us trying to develop slogans, ads, or other "suggestions" to the Kerry campaign. If Kerry needs to start relying on contributors to a web site for his campaign ideas, he's in more trouble than we can help him with.
Do we need to, as many have urged, "go negative?" Probably not. Generally, the one time you don't want to shift to a negative style of campaigning is just after your opponent has taken the lead -- it looks more like desperation than anything, and will generally be read as an admission that you don't have anything positive to offer that would be good enough to win. (Note that I am talking about the campaign itself -- there's nothing wrong with an "independent" 527 or two to go on the offensive.) On the other hand, there's a difference between running a negative attack campaign, and responding with full force when you are subject to such attacks. That's what Kerry started to do last Thursday night; better he should have taken action to defuse the Swift Boat attacks when they first appeared, rather than waiting until they had done harm. (More to the point, he shouldn't have asked MoveOn to pull their ad at that time -- the best way to have handled that situation was to have fought fire with fire, and deflected the accusations against himself with equal accusations aimed at Bush and Cheney.)
In the end, though, the solution is not to become negative but to become forceful. It isn't "mudslinging" or negative campaigning to point out the multitude of ways in which Bush has provably failed America, especially when you can offer a successful alternative. Kerry needs to focus on the average American's dissatisfactions with his or her life, show how Bush's policies have caused the problem or made it worse, and offer powerful and credible hope that a Kerry administration can make their lives better. We already know that most people, however they may have reacted to the RNC's theatrics, feel the country (translation: their own immediate reality) is going in the wrong direction. There's nothing wrong with framing the issue simply in that way: "If your life has improved since President Bush took office, go ahead and vote for him. If not, know that we have a plan to turn this country around and get it going in the right direction." In the long run, that's what will win the election. That, and steady pressure to get that message out...not panicking because our opponent may have a 11- or 15- or even 25-point lead for the next few days. What counts isn't how things stand immediately after a convention, but what happens when the bounce subsides and voters get back to the real world.
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