bubbleheads and bobbleheads

Chris "everything in my head falls immediately out of my mouth" Matthews had a Republican analyst on, talking about the proven effect of negative ads. Do you really think that an undecided person looks at an ad and immediately decides to vote against that guy, Chris sez, what kind of a bubblehead would do that?

The analyst said, the free media (the press) moves voters, not ads, but the ads set the agenda for the press---the negative ads succeed when the press starts talking about the guy in those terms.

In other words, the bubbleheads are the bobbleheads, the parrot-talking media mouths, the snide press boys and selfrighteous press babes, who go for the negative because that's conflict, and the poor dears don't know any other way to tell a story except as good guy vs. bad guy. How about good for the country, bad for the country, good for the world, bad for the world....nah. Too hard.

And since the negative ads are effective in putting little thoughts into the bobbleheads little minds, the campaigns spend millions of dollars on them, which all go to--what fun!--the media.

bumps and bruises

Despite the lack of a big post-convention bump in the head-to-head poll numbers, the Zogby poll (the most accurate in 2000) shows Kerry ahead in 13 of 16 battleground states, his best showing of the year. And the Marist poll confirms that Kerry has a cumulative lead in the battleground states, by about 8 points.

Though margins mostly continue to be very close, Kerry has opened a big lead in Illinois and some polls show a significant lead opening up in Pennsylvania.

Yesterday both Kerry and Bush campaigned in Davenport, Iowa at the same time. With the police otherwise occupied, shrewd political observers held up three banks. So we'd guess there aren't going to be many other towns interested in similiar simultaneity.