Bounceless
That brings us to the topic of the current state of the presidential race, and where John Kerry’s post-convention bounce got misplaced.
It certainly doesn’t appear to have materialized, as evidenced by the following polls:
Rasmussen: 3 points, max.
Newsweek: 4 points. And that’s generous considering that this survey’s sample population is “anybody over age 18 with a discernable pulse.”
CBS/New York Times: 2 points.
American Research Group: 1 point.
ABC/Washington Post: 4 points.
CNN/USA Today/Gallup: A 7-point loss for Kerry. And this result grew two points in Gallup's extended polling through Sunday. And, as Bush pollster Matt Dowd helpfully pointed out today, no challenger has ever gone on to win in November when trailing in the Gallup poll following his convention. Of course, Dowd also predicted a month ago that Kerry would have a fifteen-point lead by now, and he’s predicting that Bush will get no bounce out of his convention, either, so obviously more than a little expectation-management is going on.
Still, do a little quick figuring with your trusty ten-key and the result is an average bounce for the presumptively inevitable next President of the United States, John Finger Kerry, of…1.17 points.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Oh, sure, the aforementioned Mr. Dowd made his mind-messing mischief, but no less than the Clintons’ puppet at the DNC, Terry McAuliffe, predicted a pro-Kerry bounce of eight to ten points. And I, myself, in this very space four days ago, predicted – or at least overtly acknowledged the possibility of – a four to six point Kerry uptick. So what happened to it?
There is, of course, no shortage of speculation, especially from the frantic partisan press.
There's no one left to persuade. This theory goes that just about everybody who is going to vote has made up his/her mind, leaving very little, if any, “swing” or “undecided” vote. If this is true, then Bush will get no bounce from New York the end of this month no matter what he does.
Republicans responded more than Democrats. The aforementioned Gallup poll indicates that Kerry’s acceptance speech fired up Republicans more than it did Democrats, which is certainly good news. Though I don’t know that it would have caused that much of a shift against the challenger, unless there were truly that many ‘Pubbies who weren’t going to vote, or weren’t going to vote for the President. And pretty much every survey has shown Bush’s base support to be rock-solid.
There wasn't enough red meat on the menu. According to this view, Kerry treaded water because his convention (I’m not making this up) “toned down” its cacophonous Bush-bashing. That certainly isn’t the convention I witnessed, unless by “toned down” they mean “didn’t hang Bush in effigy, cannibalize the dummy like zombies, and then burn the tattered entrails on a funeral pyre on stage while Kerry and Edwards roasted marshmallows and weenies over the flames.” Even so, after three and a half years of doing everything but ritually executing the President for real, it’s awfully difficult to see how four additional days of it would have made any difference.
Bush fares better by comparison. Basically, the idea that voters already knew Bush pretty well, and after last week they know Kerry better, and more decided that they prefer Bush. Which, when one contemplates the implications of that, is the stuff of GOP wet dreams, since Dubya has been lashed with torrents of slime for his entire term, while the Boston Bacchanalia took four months out of John Kerry’s life, ginned it up to Douglas MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte Gulf, and stretched it across the succeeding thirty-four years like a tarpaulin over a compost heap. I resist this one only because to embrace it seems the road to complacency.
Kerry failed to specify what he would do about Iraq. I would have bought into this one more a couple of months ago before we’d returned sovereignty to the Iraqis. But at this point I just don’t think that Iraq is quite the white-hot issue that it was back in the spring. Or, put another way, what Kerry would “do about” Iraq doesn’t matter as much anymore because George Bush has already “done” it.
It probably doesn’t help that Kerry’s talk about a “secret plan” for Iraq as well as the economy and perhaps the entire rest of his phantom platform, is conjuring up parallels with none other than “Tricky Dick” Nixon.
Kerry focused on the wrong issues. This is Dick Morris’ hypothesis:
This is a variation on my take that Kerry should have spent the past five months trying to sell the idea that the war on terror has been won and we can and should “turn the page” and move back to domestic concerns. IOW, the old Warren Harding “normalcy” gimmick. Turn the Bushies’ very success in prosecuting the conflict against Islamic fundamentalism against them by removing the public perception of any further need for it.
Naturally, there’s quite a lot behind this theory. But I don’t think it entirely explains the dynamic.
The bounce will come later. This is as silly as its sibling, “Kerry got his bounce on Super Tuesday.”
The polls are wrong. I get a kick out of this one, if only because that’s precisely what we used to say when Clinton’s approval numbers would shoot skyward.
I won’t argue that the Gallup poll showing Kerry cratering is ipso facto correct over the others showing an average rise of under three points. But the idea that all the numbers are off and that Kerry really shot up to a twenty-point lead and the polls just “aren’t showing it” – maybe due to “right-wing bias” {snicker} - is pure partisan delusion.
So then, what’s the real story?
Well, part of it is undoubtedly the evenly-split, polarized electorate. But I took that into account when I threw out my four-to-six point forecast.
Another factor is one that isn’t being mentioned in the partisan press, but which a lot of us have observed for months: John Kerry is simply a lackluster candidate. He’s boring, pompous, arrogant, and humorless. Lacking anything resembling charisma or personal magnetism, there’s nothing in his personality to distract listeners from his cynical opportunism, shiftiness, and reflexive dishonesty. When Kerry tries to pick your pocket, he first asks you to open your jacket so he can reach it easier. And all of that came across in his acceptance speech, in which a sheen of paper-thin propaganda imagery was hung like a fig leaf on a brontosaurus-sized load of evasiveness and tergiversation.
Bill Clinton could have pulled it off. And because he spent all those years doing it, and making it look absurdly easy, every Democrat since has fallen for the illusion, and then flat on his/her face. And John Kerry is no different.
The third factor is the flip side of the second, but not in the same sense Dick Morris speculated. What John Kerry failed to do more than anything else is pound home one or two or three signature issues and a convincing amount of detail on each.
Look back at just about every recent winning first-time presidential campaign and you find a handful of issues with which the winner was indelibly identified. GDub in 2000? Tax cuts, education, prescription drugs. Clinton in ’92? Middle-class tax cut, health care. Bush41 in 1988? “Read my lips” (Yeah, that’s kind of weak, but it’s what got him elected, and breaking it was what guaranteed his defeat). Reagan in 1980? Tax cuts, balanced budget, rebuild the military, beat the commies. What are Kerry’s signature issues, besides “I served in Vietnam”? Oh, he has a whole laundry list of issues and a blurb on each on his website, but it’s just that, a laundry list. There’s no one that sticks out above the others. And thus, they’re all equally invisible, just like the candidate they serve.
Conventions aren’t primarily about beating up the other guy; they’re about lifting up your nominee. And Kerry had to practically require that the country be blindfolded, ear-muffed, and faced the opposite direction when he was unveiled for fear that some glimpse of the real him would get out, and destroy his chances of sneaking past that thirty-four year elephant in the bird cage.
He’s still the “anybody but Bush” default. And that was never going to be enough to produce more than a token poll blip, just like it’s not going to be enough to drag him first across the finish line.
It certainly doesn’t appear to have materialized, as evidenced by the following polls:
Rasmussen: 3 points, max.
Newsweek: 4 points. And that’s generous considering that this survey’s sample population is “anybody over age 18 with a discernable pulse.”
CBS/New York Times: 2 points.
American Research Group: 1 point.
ABC/Washington Post: 4 points.
CNN/USA Today/Gallup: A 7-point loss for Kerry. And this result grew two points in Gallup's extended polling through Sunday. And, as Bush pollster Matt Dowd helpfully pointed out today, no challenger has ever gone on to win in November when trailing in the Gallup poll following his convention. Of course, Dowd also predicted a month ago that Kerry would have a fifteen-point lead by now, and he’s predicting that Bush will get no bounce out of his convention, either, so obviously more than a little expectation-management is going on.
Still, do a little quick figuring with your trusty ten-key and the result is an average bounce for the presumptively inevitable next President of the United States, John Finger Kerry, of…1.17 points.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Oh, sure, the aforementioned Mr. Dowd made his mind-messing mischief, but no less than the Clintons’ puppet at the DNC, Terry McAuliffe, predicted a pro-Kerry bounce of eight to ten points. And I, myself, in this very space four days ago, predicted – or at least overtly acknowledged the possibility of – a four to six point Kerry uptick. So what happened to it?
There is, of course, no shortage of speculation, especially from the frantic partisan press.
There's no one left to persuade. This theory goes that just about everybody who is going to vote has made up his/her mind, leaving very little, if any, “swing” or “undecided” vote. If this is true, then Bush will get no bounce from New York the end of this month no matter what he does.
Republicans responded more than Democrats. The aforementioned Gallup poll indicates that Kerry’s acceptance speech fired up Republicans more than it did Democrats, which is certainly good news. Though I don’t know that it would have caused that much of a shift against the challenger, unless there were truly that many ‘Pubbies who weren’t going to vote, or weren’t going to vote for the President. And pretty much every survey has shown Bush’s base support to be rock-solid.
There wasn't enough red meat on the menu. According to this view, Kerry treaded water because his convention (I’m not making this up) “toned down” its cacophonous Bush-bashing. That certainly isn’t the convention I witnessed, unless by “toned down” they mean “didn’t hang Bush in effigy, cannibalize the dummy like zombies, and then burn the tattered entrails on a funeral pyre on stage while Kerry and Edwards roasted marshmallows and weenies over the flames.” Even so, after three and a half years of doing everything but ritually executing the President for real, it’s awfully difficult to see how four additional days of it would have made any difference.
Bush fares better by comparison. Basically, the idea that voters already knew Bush pretty well, and after last week they know Kerry better, and more decided that they prefer Bush. Which, when one contemplates the implications of that, is the stuff of GOP wet dreams, since Dubya has been lashed with torrents of slime for his entire term, while the Boston Bacchanalia took four months out of John Kerry’s life, ginned it up to Douglas MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte Gulf, and stretched it across the succeeding thirty-four years like a tarpaulin over a compost heap. I resist this one only because to embrace it seems the road to complacency.
Kerry failed to specify what he would do about Iraq. I would have bought into this one more a couple of months ago before we’d returned sovereignty to the Iraqis. But at this point I just don’t think that Iraq is quite the white-hot issue that it was back in the spring. Or, put another way, what Kerry would “do about” Iraq doesn’t matter as much anymore because George Bush has already “done” it.
It probably doesn’t help that Kerry’s talk about a “secret plan” for Iraq as well as the economy and perhaps the entire rest of his phantom platform, is conjuring up parallels with none other than “Tricky Dick” Nixon.
Kerry focused on the wrong issues. This is Dick Morris’ hypothesis:
Kerry had a critical policy choice to make: Use the four nights of his conclave to stress the domestic issues on which he has significant leads in the polls (health care, drug prices, wages, Social Security, Medicare, environment, the deficit and education), or try to strengthen his posture on the war-related issues on which Bush has an edge — terror, defense, homeland security and Iraq. In the first three nights, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards made the right decision and focused on the domestic concerns. As one listened to their speeches, the issues that predate 9/11 got larger and terror got smaller as a key issue for November. They said, in essence, that terror is something you read about in the papers or see on TV. But drug prices, health insurance, wage levels and schools are the reality you see every day in your own life. Then came the uniforms. Old ones to be sure, but Kerry chose to showcase his Vietnam record to the virtual exclusion of anything else on the convention's final night. His old shipmates, Max Cleland and his salute on taking the podium all served to remind voters that we are, indeed, at war and that Kerry is running for the post of wartime — not peacetime — president.
In that one night, Kerry gave all of the gains of the previous three days back to the Republicans.
This is a variation on my take that Kerry should have spent the past five months trying to sell the idea that the war on terror has been won and we can and should “turn the page” and move back to domestic concerns. IOW, the old Warren Harding “normalcy” gimmick. Turn the Bushies’ very success in prosecuting the conflict against Islamic fundamentalism against them by removing the public perception of any further need for it.
Naturally, there’s quite a lot behind this theory. But I don’t think it entirely explains the dynamic.
The bounce will come later. This is as silly as its sibling, “Kerry got his bounce on Super Tuesday.”
The polls are wrong. I get a kick out of this one, if only because that’s precisely what we used to say when Clinton’s approval numbers would shoot skyward.
I won’t argue that the Gallup poll showing Kerry cratering is ipso facto correct over the others showing an average rise of under three points. But the idea that all the numbers are off and that Kerry really shot up to a twenty-point lead and the polls just “aren’t showing it” – maybe due to “right-wing bias” {snicker} - is pure partisan delusion.
So then, what’s the real story?
Well, part of it is undoubtedly the evenly-split, polarized electorate. But I took that into account when I threw out my four-to-six point forecast.
Another factor is one that isn’t being mentioned in the partisan press, but which a lot of us have observed for months: John Kerry is simply a lackluster candidate. He’s boring, pompous, arrogant, and humorless. Lacking anything resembling charisma or personal magnetism, there’s nothing in his personality to distract listeners from his cynical opportunism, shiftiness, and reflexive dishonesty. When Kerry tries to pick your pocket, he first asks you to open your jacket so he can reach it easier. And all of that came across in his acceptance speech, in which a sheen of paper-thin propaganda imagery was hung like a fig leaf on a brontosaurus-sized load of evasiveness and tergiversation.
Bill Clinton could have pulled it off. And because he spent all those years doing it, and making it look absurdly easy, every Democrat since has fallen for the illusion, and then flat on his/her face. And John Kerry is no different.
The third factor is the flip side of the second, but not in the same sense Dick Morris speculated. What John Kerry failed to do more than anything else is pound home one or two or three signature issues and a convincing amount of detail on each.
Look back at just about every recent winning first-time presidential campaign and you find a handful of issues with which the winner was indelibly identified. GDub in 2000? Tax cuts, education, prescription drugs. Clinton in ’92? Middle-class tax cut, health care. Bush41 in 1988? “Read my lips” (Yeah, that’s kind of weak, but it’s what got him elected, and breaking it was what guaranteed his defeat). Reagan in 1980? Tax cuts, balanced budget, rebuild the military, beat the commies. What are Kerry’s signature issues, besides “I served in Vietnam”? Oh, he has a whole laundry list of issues and a blurb on each on his website, but it’s just that, a laundry list. There’s no one that sticks out above the others. And thus, they’re all equally invisible, just like the candidate they serve.
Conventions aren’t primarily about beating up the other guy; they’re about lifting up your nominee. And Kerry had to practically require that the country be blindfolded, ear-muffed, and faced the opposite direction when he was unveiled for fear that some glimpse of the real him would get out, and destroy his chances of sneaking past that thirty-four year elephant in the bird cage.
He’s still the “anybody but Bush” default. And that was never going to be enough to produce more than a token poll blip, just like it’s not going to be enough to drag him first across the finish line.
posted by JASmius at 1:18 PM
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