Category Archives: Politics: US: 2004 Election

New poll results look much better for Kerry:

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry gained ground at President George W. Bush's expense in polls taken in Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, New Mexico and New Hampshire after last week's presidential debate.

Kerry has a 2 percentage point edge in Florida and the candidates are tied in New Hampshire, two states that were among those Bush won in 2000, according to the American Research Group.

In New Mexico and New Jersey, Kerry leads by 3 percentage points, within the error margin, according to polls. Bush and Kerry are tied in Iowa. The three states backed the Democratic nominee in 2000.

“Independent voters, who shifted to Bush from Kerry beginning just prior to the Republican convention, seem to be shifting back to Kerry, and that trend has intensified in the days following the first debate,'' American Research Group President Dick Bennett said in an e-mail.

One's tempted to say this is the start of major Kerry “momentum.” Trouble is, I have come to mistrust all the polls. In order to believe one, I'd need to know lots more, starting with what percentage of the electorate they think will vote, and how that number compares to 2000. I think that turnout, at least in the 'swing' states, will be substantially greater than four years ago, especially among the younger voters. Is this reflected in their models?

Then again, I suspect that exit polls got the Florida vote right (showing a Gore win), and the actual count got it wrong — in substantial part due to the “butterfly ballot” people who were polled but not properly counted. But with exit polls we don't have any doubt about who the 'likely voters' might be, so the sampling problem is easier.

Could it be that there is hope for the Republic?

Yesterday I suggested that what people thought of the foreign policy part of the debate would depend a great deal on whether they had the facts to detect Cheney's artfully delivered deadpan mendacity. Today the media — both blogs and traditional sources — went into high fact-check mode. Summaries at Needlenose and White House Briefing.

Cheney's best zinger was the he went to the Senate to preside over it most every Tuesday and yet he'd never met Edwards before the debate. Both parts are a lie: Cheney's Senate presiding record is rather limited, and Cheney is on archival TV footage sitting next to Edwards at a dinner three years ago. (The Democrats put out a nice video about it.) And the part about Edwards's hometown paper was not real accurate either…

I think the major print and network media willingness to fact-check all of a sudden (where have they been for the past three years?) is largely due to pressure via blogs, which has served as a counter-weight to the right-wing domination of cable TV and AM radio, those modern yahoos who treat questioning the Maximum Leader as a form of treason. Now we have sane people noting that letting the Leader and Assistant Leader (however we sort the roles) lie with impunity is itself perhaps not the essence of patriotism.

Brad DeLong thinks that Cheney lying about the small stuff is major:

I believe that Cheney's loss to Edwards will, by this weekend, be seen as even greater in magnitude than Bush's loss to Kerry last Thursday. This is just too good a story not to dominate public memory.

In the future, when people talk about most devastating moments in vice presidential debates, they will not talk about Lloyd Bentsen's riposte to Dan Quayle's claim to be the second coming of JFK; they will talk about Dick Cheney's forgetting that he had ever seen John Edwards before.

In other words, the conventional wisdom is hardening that Cheney has committed a gaffe—one of those silly small things that the press pounces on and turns into a mountain when it (1) thinks the small thing is sympathetic magic for a big important thing (2) that the press believes to be true, but (3) doesn't have the guts to say directly.

Trial by gaffe is a nutty way to pick the government of the world's greatest superpower. But it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Update: Digby points to Just My 2 where you will find some very high-ranking Republicans who have gone on record in the strongest and most definite terms that even minor mis-statements in a Presidential debate (even something as small as where and when you were with a public official) indicate something profound and troubling about a candidate.

Cheney would be one of the most effective TV presences — because of, not despite, his lies — were it not for his irrepressible mean streak. Whether people think he won or lost may well turn on their response to the meanness factor. TV does not like mean.

If you insist on substance, Cheney did almost as good a job as could be done to make the administration look good on foreign policy. Edwards as much as said, 'who you gonna believe: this guy or your eyes?' It's a good argument, but there were others he could have used too. If you were not aware of the facts Cheney was distorting, you might well have thought he won the foreign affairs part, although not by much; if you knew the subtext, then Edwards won on foreign affairs, but didn't do so as effectively as he might have. I think Edwards's stock may rise if people fact check the debate thoroughly, as I think Edwards missed openings to nail Cheney mis-statements.

Conversely, Edwards simply crucified Cheney on domestic issues. Wasn't even close.

Update (10/6): A quickie CBS poll “of 178 uncommitted voters found that 41 percent said Edwards won the debate, versus 28 percent who said Cheney won. Thirty-one percent said it was a tie.” One more time and it's over…..

This is an awfully good short political video: Keeping America Scared.

It pushes back against one of the Bush administration's most effective and improper tactics. For, instead of taking the FDR line ('nothing to fear but fear itself'), Bush and his crew have stoked the fires of fear (mixed in with what we used to call 'waving the bloody shirt') for political gain.

The video not only shows an affable Bush and a creepy Cheney doing it, but also shows Rudy Guilliani trying too hard and overdoing it, and Laura Bush's ability to say anything and make it sound OK. There's also a brief (don't blink) but very chilling cameo by Hollywood box-office star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like any piece of politcal argument that takes quotes out of context, there is a way in which this video could be called unfair. But the sheer volume of the repetition it exposes, and the setting in which it happened, shows, I think, that this retaliation is not in fact below the belt.

The DNC has kindly provided a highlights video called “Faces of Frustration” to show what I missed by not watching the split-screen TV version of the debate. It's quite something.

Listening to the excerpts of the debate on the radio this morning, I realize Kerry won big. The soundbites are (1) Kerry saying he made a mistake speaking about the war, but Bush made a mistake invading, which is worse? and (2) Bush sounding amazingly lost and hesitant, then petulant, after being called on his sly suggestion that the Iraq invasion was retaliation for 9/11. His “I know OBL attacked us” sounds like a five year old in the playground trying unsuccessfully to deflect teacher's ire.

According to the utterly unbiased Kerry-Edwards web page, the instapolls confirm that Kerry won big.

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