Money isn’t everything: Political Update

From an historical point of view, the good news for John Kerry is that he is virtually tied with the incumbent President in the spring before the election, and in some polls has a lead beyond the statistical margin of error. The good news for President Bush is that after all the terrible and shocking news of the past month, he is still virtually tied with his challenger.

So the situation is still fluid. When the photos from Iraqi prisons stop coming or at least stop being so newly shocking, and when general Iraq exhaustion sets in, while Bush makes his weekly speeches on Iraq, and the trappings of a transition begin to appear, his downward job approval plunge could stop. He has bottomed out so far at around 42%. If he goes below 40%, he's toast. If he stays and slowly improves, Bush is still in the running. The next month may tell the tale.

The electoral numbers right now are beginning to be quite grim for Bush, as Kerry pulls ahead in many of the "battleground" states, and some states the polverts (political experts) thought were safe for Bush are coming into play. Independents are swinging away from Bush but not yet in a committed way towards Kerry. Bush is experiencing some erosion of Republican support, but likely only a bit of it will go to Kerry. However, a strongly conservative third (or would it be fourth?) party candidate could still emerge and siphon off some of that discontent.

So far Kerry has been working "on the ground" in key states, getting local coverage and sounding mostly domestic policy themes. The only national news he's made recently is the proposal to postpone accepting the Democratic nomination until the Republican convention, so that spending and money-raising limits won't kick in six weeks before the Bushies face those limits. We expect this idea to go away in a few days, but it does indicate that the Dems are being surprisingly successful in raising money. Spending six weeks more cash on campaign ads may not be either necessary or all that useful. According to a recent study, voters overwhelmingly declared they were ignoring ads (which should be taken with a grain of salt, since the idea of ads is to connect negative or positive emotions, the more unconscious the better) but also that they thought Kerry's ads (which are almost solely biographical) are more negative than Bush's (which are almost completely negative.) They are probably thinking (if they are thinking) of the anti-Bush ads run by move on.org and other unaffiliated groups. They have no spending limits.

Eventually Kerry is going to have to take the national stage, and make a compelling case for himself. His problem may be that his support is so soft that any "success" that is not obvious and abject failure in Iraq will motivate a rally round the president feeling. He has to make people feel good, feel positive, about their choice of him, without making them feel guilty for abandoning a president in "wartime." The convention is the natural and traditional stage for this. It will be the first look many voters take. He has to sound a resonant theme, which doesn’t rely on advertising.

Fortunately we know someone who has figured out exactly how to do this, and perhaps one day soon we will divulge this information. If you’re a Kerry campaign honcho, email for details to bilko@tidepool.com.