Bush tramples Kerry in second debate - but will it matter?
I posted the following analysis this morning in reply to a reader comment. I reprint it here in the interests of redundancy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember the 1996 campaign? I know I'll never forget it. Ever since the 1994 GOP wipe-out I was positive that Bill Clinton was dead meat, a lame duck, a clay pidgeon, pure skeet. Moreover, I thought that Phil Gramm - Phil Gramm! - would be the man who would rid us of him once and for all. After Gramm fizzled and Bob Dole became the "presumptive" Republican nominee, I still clung stubbornly to my certitude that Clinton was finished. Even after Dole had been buried by that ChiComm-fueled tsunami of slime ads and was behnd by double-digits, I nevertheless insisted that Dole would "come from behind" to "shock the world" and "win a substantial victory."
It was all nonsense. Pure wishful thinking. And after that debacle (my debacle), I vowed never to make such a fool of myself as a political analyst ever again.
And in 2000...I nearly did just that by weighting the Rasmussen poll in my polling composite disproportionately for no other reason than that it consistently showed George W. Bush with a bigger lead than just about any other survey. So I went into Election Day thinking he was up by five or six points when he was really almost getting submarined by Al Gore.
Fast-forward to here & now. Click on my polling composite, which links to the speadsheet on my website and scroll down to the benchmarks at the bottom of the page. The President went in to the first debate with a four-point lead. By last night that lead had shrunk by nearly half. As they say, numbers don't lie. So the question is, why have the numbers moved in Kerry's direction? And the obvious answer is, the President's performance in the first debate.
As anybody familiar with presidential politics knows, televised debates are not about substance, they're about style. That's why people who listened to the first Nixon-Kennedy debate thought that Nixon won, while those who watched it on the tube thought Kennedy was victorious.
Debate #1 produced a similar result. Bush had the better arguments, but he didn't articulate them very well, nor did he look very good in the attempt. Whereas Kerry was shoveling with both hands, but he looked and sounded better than the President in the process. And given that Kerry's biggest problem had heretofore been "the stature gap" - not being seen as presidential, or, heck, even being taken seriously in any sense - that contrast gave Mr. French precisely what he needed. He looked like a credible alternative, and that's all that most undecided voters need to pink-slip an incumbent. And, sure enough, while Bush's numbers have held steady in my composite, Kerry's numbers have risen modestly but steadily over the past week.
If I sound "pessimistic," it's because of several factors:
1) Rampant Democrat vote fraud all across the country. If you'll notice, right below my polling composite I've posted election projections with, and without, vote fraud figured in, to give an idea of what we can expect on Election Day. By my admittedly arbitrary reckoning (though there is some number-crunching behind it), I figure the President has to win by at least 2%, including in each state he would otherwise carry, in order to overcome this "vote fraud discount." And, going into last night, Bush's lead in my composite was barely over 2%.
2) The first debate didn't cost Bush support, but it picked up support for Kerry, and re-energized his base. In order to reverse either of those gains, Kerry would have to commit a serious gaffe, by which I mean something other than another flip-flop, an angle to which even I've grown numb after all these months. Such a thing isn't impossible, but it isn't very likely.
3) In order for the President to either reverse Kerry's momentum, much less regain his own, in the remaining two debates, he would have to utterly and completely dominate him. And, much as I love Dubya and huge as the ideological gap is between the two men, he's just not that good a communicator.
So, the best that we could realistically hope for in last night's encounter was for Bush to stop the bleeding. And in this, I think he was successful. He looked and sounded much better, was far more "on his game" (wanna bet that he took a nap yesterday afternoon, as I suggested?), finally brought Kerry's lamentable senate record into play and scored repeatedly off of it (I loved the "You can run, but you can't hide" line; reminded me of Clubber Lang in Rocky III), demonstrated a command of domestic policy that must have been an unpleasant surprise to the Disloyal Opposition. Most of all, given the "town hall" format, he was able to connect with the audience as Kerry couldn't hope to, as clinched by the two men's post-debate actions: Bush wading out into the crowd to press the flesh, while Kerry and Teraaaaaaaayza retreated aloofly to the moderator's podium to kibbitz with Charlie Gibson (who was a surprisingly evenhanded moderator, BTW).
As one blogger put it, "the room belonged to Bush; Kerry was just visiting."
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
Bush once again looked like the President, and that makes last week's mediocre outing look like just a bad night rather than grounds for legit concern about whether he's up to continuing in the job. And Kerry did not react well to being challenged; he was less commanding, not as smooth, came across as more vain and arrogant, as he is want to do when there are deviations from his planned script.
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
Bush has given about as good a defense of his foreign policy as he is capable of giving, whereas Kerry's has collapsed with his concession that the French and Germans aren't sending their vast legions of crack warriors rumbling to Mesopotamia. His domestic agenda has also collapsed with Opie Edwards' concession in the veep debate that their $2 trillion shopping list might not, after all, be compatible with "cutting the deficit in half." And he even took a modified "read my lips" pledge!
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
God knows it ought to be. It really, really should.
But will it?
I don't know.
If so, Bush wins. If not, Kerry will probably steal it.
We'll find out in 24 days.
Or eventually.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember the 1996 campaign? I know I'll never forget it. Ever since the 1994 GOP wipe-out I was positive that Bill Clinton was dead meat, a lame duck, a clay pidgeon, pure skeet. Moreover, I thought that Phil Gramm - Phil Gramm! - would be the man who would rid us of him once and for all. After Gramm fizzled and Bob Dole became the "presumptive" Republican nominee, I still clung stubbornly to my certitude that Clinton was finished. Even after Dole had been buried by that ChiComm-fueled tsunami of slime ads and was behnd by double-digits, I nevertheless insisted that Dole would "come from behind" to "shock the world" and "win a substantial victory."
It was all nonsense. Pure wishful thinking. And after that debacle (my debacle), I vowed never to make such a fool of myself as a political analyst ever again.
And in 2000...I nearly did just that by weighting the Rasmussen poll in my polling composite disproportionately for no other reason than that it consistently showed George W. Bush with a bigger lead than just about any other survey. So I went into Election Day thinking he was up by five or six points when he was really almost getting submarined by Al Gore.
Fast-forward to here & now. Click on my polling composite, which links to the speadsheet on my website and scroll down to the benchmarks at the bottom of the page. The President went in to the first debate with a four-point lead. By last night that lead had shrunk by nearly half. As they say, numbers don't lie. So the question is, why have the numbers moved in Kerry's direction? And the obvious answer is, the President's performance in the first debate.
As anybody familiar with presidential politics knows, televised debates are not about substance, they're about style. That's why people who listened to the first Nixon-Kennedy debate thought that Nixon won, while those who watched it on the tube thought Kennedy was victorious.
Debate #1 produced a similar result. Bush had the better arguments, but he didn't articulate them very well, nor did he look very good in the attempt. Whereas Kerry was shoveling with both hands, but he looked and sounded better than the President in the process. And given that Kerry's biggest problem had heretofore been "the stature gap" - not being seen as presidential, or, heck, even being taken seriously in any sense - that contrast gave Mr. French precisely what he needed. He looked like a credible alternative, and that's all that most undecided voters need to pink-slip an incumbent. And, sure enough, while Bush's numbers have held steady in my composite, Kerry's numbers have risen modestly but steadily over the past week.
If I sound "pessimistic," it's because of several factors:
1) Rampant Democrat vote fraud all across the country. If you'll notice, right below my polling composite I've posted election projections with, and without, vote fraud figured in, to give an idea of what we can expect on Election Day. By my admittedly arbitrary reckoning (though there is some number-crunching behind it), I figure the President has to win by at least 2%, including in each state he would otherwise carry, in order to overcome this "vote fraud discount." And, going into last night, Bush's lead in my composite was barely over 2%.
2) The first debate didn't cost Bush support, but it picked up support for Kerry, and re-energized his base. In order to reverse either of those gains, Kerry would have to commit a serious gaffe, by which I mean something other than another flip-flop, an angle to which even I've grown numb after all these months. Such a thing isn't impossible, but it isn't very likely.
3) In order for the President to either reverse Kerry's momentum, much less regain his own, in the remaining two debates, he would have to utterly and completely dominate him. And, much as I love Dubya and huge as the ideological gap is between the two men, he's just not that good a communicator.
So, the best that we could realistically hope for in last night's encounter was for Bush to stop the bleeding. And in this, I think he was successful. He looked and sounded much better, was far more "on his game" (wanna bet that he took a nap yesterday afternoon, as I suggested?), finally brought Kerry's lamentable senate record into play and scored repeatedly off of it (I loved the "You can run, but you can't hide" line; reminded me of Clubber Lang in Rocky III), demonstrated a command of domestic policy that must have been an unpleasant surprise to the Disloyal Opposition. Most of all, given the "town hall" format, he was able to connect with the audience as Kerry couldn't hope to, as clinched by the two men's post-debate actions: Bush wading out into the crowd to press the flesh, while Kerry and Teraaaaaaaayza retreated aloofly to the moderator's podium to kibbitz with Charlie Gibson (who was a surprisingly evenhanded moderator, BTW).
As one blogger put it, "the room belonged to Bush; Kerry was just visiting."
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
Bush once again looked like the President, and that makes last week's mediocre outing look like just a bad night rather than grounds for legit concern about whether he's up to continuing in the job. And Kerry did not react well to being challenged; he was less commanding, not as smooth, came across as more vain and arrogant, as he is want to do when there are deviations from his planned script.
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
Bush has given about as good a defense of his foreign policy as he is capable of giving, whereas Kerry's has collapsed with his concession that the French and Germans aren't sending their vast legions of crack warriors rumbling to Mesopotamia. His domestic agenda has also collapsed with Opie Edwards' concession in the veep debate that their $2 trillion shopping list might not, after all, be compatible with "cutting the deficit in half." And he even took a modified "read my lips" pledge!
But was it enough to change the dynamic of the race again?
God knows it ought to be. It really, really should.
But will it?
I don't know.
If so, Bush wins. If not, Kerry will probably steal it.
We'll find out in 24 days.
Or eventually.
posted by JASmius at 2:31 PM
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