pre-Debate

It's game day. The buzz on Bush is that they're going to throw everything including the kitchen sink (i.e. "liberal") at Kerry. They will attack his "record", that is the distortions of his voting record in the Senate, hoping to score points, seed doubts, and force Kerry to play defense all night.

Doubts are creeping into the establishment press that Bush can recover. Howard Kurtz, WPost keeper of the CW, opines that Bush is sounding desperate. We just heard excerpts of his "new, hard-hitting" stump speech, and Bush's delivery hasn't seemed to improve much from the first debate. His timing does seem off, even in front of a friendly audience, but then we've thought that before when others hailed him as another Churchill. But a little doubt has crept into our certainty that this is all a set up for the Bush Comeback storyline. A little doubt, not a lot. We still think that's what we will hear, regardless of what happens at the debate.

How will Kerry do in the town hall format? He's done a lot of these. We've heard him be really sharp, and engaging. But it was in this format that he also tended to ramble, and made his biggest voted for/voted against gaffe. But these are the playoffs, the finals. He'll step up. He may well surprise some voters---certainly some talking heads---with his mastery of the town hall form. He may have won the Iowa caucuses because he was always willing to answer everyone's questions at a public forum.

One national poll shows Kerry at 50% and leading. That 50% is a very good number. Our idea of strategy for this debate is for Kerry to continue to hit Bush on Iraq, then close the deal on domestic issues next week. But a lot will depend on the questions. It's easier for candidates to be creative with their responses when the questions are asked by a press person. But not directly answering a voter's question looks insulting.

Kerry also mentioned on Thursday that he would be talking in more detail "in a few days" about Iraq. Maybe that's what they've got planned for tonight. But it would be smart to have something that Bush hasn't heard, that could throw him. The month's employment figures come out in a few hours. We doubt they are going to be good. And Kerry has got to bring up the price of oil, in terms of impact on people today and the economy going into next year.


UPDATE: The jobs report was indeed quite bad. With the price of oil at record levels, Wall Street is beginning to show worry. Kerry has another opportunity tonight, this time on the economy. The WPost also has a story that quotes a proposed federal budget for Bush's next year that has severe cuts in education and homeland security. Kerry can continue to use Bush's detachment from reality as a theme that links Iraq and the economy. His tone in doing so will be crucial. Bush's only strategy of hacking away with his blatantly dishonest account of Kerry's record will test his powers of geniality tonight, because he is not facing an audience likely to be all that responsive to attacks. He's done this pretty well before---with the self-deprecating head bobs, and soft spoken "there's a difference between my opponent and me. He's a weakling flip flopping traitor on the side of evil, and I am the strong, resolute Mr. America who talks to Jesus. You decide." We'll see just how rattled he is tonight.

Journalists among the mediaheads are starting to express somewhat coded concern about the latest Bush's attacks being factually insupportable---in other words, a string of distortions and lies. Because being "objective" means you can't say that they are lies, supposedly. But the Bushies are spending a lot of money to disseminate these lies. This makes the debates even more crucial.

Our bottom line continues to be that the media has already written its lead: the Bush comeback. It'll be strongest on Fox, MSNBC and CNN, but at least one of the networks will also lead with it.

Our overall belief continues to be that Kerry needs to stay even, that voters continue to see him as they did in the first debate. He doesn't have to score the kind of victory he did in that debate. As long as he is pretty even in the polls, and especially if he is even slightly ahead by election day, the un-polled new voters and minority voters will give him the popular vote and electoral vote victory.