V Minus 5


The missing explosives in Iraq continues to be an explosive issue in America. President Bush's first comment on it has furnished the Kerry campaign with a potentially damaging ad line: "For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as Commander in Chief." Today Rudy Guliani blamed failure to find the munitions on the troops. A Minnesota TV station believes it has footage of American troops in fact finding the munitions which have since disappeared.

The polls aren't showing much movement, and they continue to be all over the place. However, at least one poll within the past two days gives Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, PA, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan to Kerry. But other polls show Bush slightly ahead in several of those states. Chuck Todd of the Hotline now has 10 disputed states, and believes the pollsters don't have a handle on the race and are too unsure of their numbers to be credible. Polls weigh for turnout, and nobody knows how high the turnout will be.

One indication of turnout is Florida, where thousands have already voted. A poll of those voters shows Kerry leading by 17 points, but the size of the poll makes the margin questionable.

While Zogby tracking poll continues to show Bush ahead nationally, the Economist is one of several new polls giving Kerry a 49% to 46% edge. The Economist has also endorsed Kerry; the magazine endorsed Bush in 2000.

The Pew Research Center issued a report saying that Kerry has picked up more undecided voters in the past month than Bush, and the overwhelming factor was his performance in the debates. This contrasts with CNN etc. who keep saying that the race is back to where it was before the debates.

To be fair to the cable stations, the other night CNN's Aaron Brown responded to Dick Cheney's comment that Iraq is a "remarkable success story" with a blistering recap of the situation and a rebuke. On MsNBC, the voice of reason continues to be the voice of Reagan---Ron Reagan---who said yesterday that the importance of the missing explosives in Iraq isn't whether they were there after U.S. troops arrived, but that the Bushies hadn't ordered the troops to look for them. And he characterized Bush's misstatements of Kerry's words as "lying."

The strongest hope for Kerry supporters continues to be turnout and the Get Out the Vote Effort. Several of the lefty blogs are showering praise on the professionalism of the combined effort of traditional Democratic party and union efforts and the new organizations, all working together under the rubric of America Votes.

On the ground organization suggests not only that all of the swing states are in play, but that some generally given to Bush---Arizona in particular---are also in play.

The mainstream media has picked up the story of attempts to prevent or discourage voters, which has had some good effects in shining some light on Ohio, for instance. There the state's newspapers had little to say about GOPer efforts to subvert voting rights until the national media ran with the story. However, the prospect of possible conflict on voting day, resulting in challenges and at the very least, long lines, could in itself discourage voting. Which makes election day get out the vote efforts all the more important.

And activists and reporters are already looking at 7 day weather forecasts for Tuesday. In a normal year, the weather could decide a close race. This doesn't appear to be a normal year.

Not when the Boston Red Sox win the World Series, during a full lunar eclipse. Not only is Boston John Kerry's hometown team, but the St. Louis Cardinal ownership has strong ties to Bush, having formerly owned the Texas Rangers when Bush was their front man.

T-Shirt of the Day: Drop Bush, Not Bombs.
Button of the Day: Bring Back Complete Sentences. Vote Kerry-Edwards.