According to this CBS/NYT poll, Bush leads Kerry 50-41. I am sure there are other polls that have it closer, others that have it farther apart.
My question- why don’t the Democrats learn? They have gotten nastier and nastier in the last few weeks, and every time they knock the vitriol up a notch, they get rewarded with a swift kick in the polls. They pulled this shit in the last few weeks of the 2002 election (remember the Wellstone memorial), and got hammered. They simply are not fit to govern.
Oliver
Yeah, the RNC convention was just overflowing with goodwill for the loyal opposition. Please.
Sandi
John shouldn’t that read “a swift boat kick in the polls”?
Actually they have no issues. Kerry can’t talk about the war on Iraq because his base is split. He can’t talk about the economy or jobs because it’s back to as good or better than Clinton’s 96 re-election. He can’t talk about his senate record because it is atrocious. He may as well quit talking about his military record, because right or wrong the swifties have the upper hand.
Kerry and the DNC instead slings loads of mud hoping some of it will stick, but most of it splashes back on Kerry.
He could and does at times talk about too much spending though not the right expenditures. He rants about spending too high in Iraq when he should be hounding Bush as well as his congressional cohorts for barrel after barrel of pork.
shark
I guess the Soros whore doesn’t understand the difference between drawing distinctions based on the positions and actions of the candidate as opposed to the Dems personally smearing Bush every 5 seconds.
Spend that money while you can, Soros whore. After you lose the election, Soros pulls the plug on your funding.
Brennan Griffin
And the Swift Boats’ contradictory, unsubstantiated, and often unsavory pack of lies, innuendo, and rewriting of history wasn’t nasty?
The second Dan Rather came out with something negative against Bush, the right-wing machine jumped on it immediately. The Swift Boat stuff was often just as egregious, but the media didn’t have the same pressure to come clean, and it went on forever.
Brennan
Mason
I’ve also gotten a kick out of how polls are suddenly oversampling Republicans or are wrong for reasons X Y and Z. I don’t pay much attention to polls, too much can change in a month, but these folks are in total denial.
Josh Martin
Brennan, please name one factual allegation made in Unfit For Command that has been conclusively disproven.
GR
Oliver, that is exactly the wrong attitude if you want to help turn around Kerry’s place in the polls.
It doesn’t matter what the republicans are doing. If what YOU are doing isn’t working, try something different.
AllenS
I’ll second the motion made by Josh Martin.
Justin Ogren
Welp, looks like the Navy just said Kerry’s medals have been approved properly…..
There goes the Swift Boat accusations out the window for good.
Toren
Justin;
Obviously you don’t know what the Swift Boat Vets have said or you would not have made such a ludicrous comment.
Justin O.
RRRRRRight……and what you know I was referring to junk like William Schachte’s claim right…..
Ludicrous comment LMAO
Or did you think I was talking about Cambodia? HAHA
Ken Hahn
Every two years
Sandi
Let me get this straight Justin, all the SBV claims cannot be proved, therefor none of the are true.
That is sound logic?
As far as the medals I am sure they were properly approved, but most were approved based on Kerry’s own reports of what happened.
shark
And the Swift Boats’ contradictory, unsubstantiated, and often unsavory pack of lies, innuendo, and rewriting of history wasn’t nasty?
So you’re equating SwiftVets with the crap promoted by the Democrats? You know, Gore, Dean, MacAuliffe, Wes Clark, Sharpton, Pelosi…..
You do realize that the SwiftVets are NOT a RNC group. You want to compare them to something, compare them to MoveOn.
And it’s hysterical that the left hates the swift vets so much. Your fricking blindness for everything except winning made you idiots think Vietnam service would innoculate Kerry against every attack against him. Against his Senate (non) career. About his actions after the war. Your hatred of this president drove you so mad, you went back on every cherished position and belief on Vietnam. The party of “baby killers!” and spitting on soldiers and anti-war and running to canada and “we support our troops when they kill their officers” finally gets so desperate they decide to throw a Vietnam vet out there to win, and now that he’s losing- it’s driving you all even more mad!
You were all so worried about “electability” that you never vetted your candidate. You children would’ve been better off nominating Dean, the man you really wanted, or Lieberman, the only adult in the field. Instead of elected someone you thought could be elected, and HE choose an empty suit with a cheesy smile to be his running mate.
And now, you lose.
Try not to riot too much over the next 4 years while GWB appoints up to 4 members of the Supreme Court.
Buh-bye!
Justin Ogren
Dude, Shark, your just pumping blah out of your mouth just to sound good. RNC group? Republican National Convention group, uh what?
WHO IN THE FUCK WOULD want Lieberman as pres? His ass shouldn’t even be in office, he’s terrible upon terrible! He’s a piece of shit!
Awwww man, all those Kurds Saddam killed don’t matter now, we killed legions more of Iraqi’s than Saddam killed Kurds. Where’s the justification in that?
Josh Martin
Justin,
You really crying over dead Iraqi soldiers? Do you also get misty-eyed over dead German soldiers? How about Imperial Japanese Army types killed at Iwo? Perhaps you view the Battle of Midway as a terrible defeat.
Strange mindset, that.
Also, RNC = Republican National Committee. Just for future reference.
Sandi
Justin, I would have voted for Lieberman instead of Bush, and I am a republican. Though I am not real happy with Bush, I am not out of my mind enough to vote for Kerry.
S.W. Anderson
The Democratic national convention, by comparison to the GOP slimefest that followed, was a model of politeness and positivism. That’s probably one reason why Bush is ahead now.
Nastier and nastier, you say? Friend, my fantasy matchup is Harry Truman reincarnated and running against George W. Bush, with a reincarnated LBJ at his side in the VP slot.
I’d give them about two weeks to leave Bush and Cheney hot, crisp, brown and ready for applications of butter and marmalade.
S.W. Anderson
“Kerry . . . can’t talk about the economy or jobs because it’s back to as good or better than Clinton’s 96 re-election.”
None are so blind as those who’ve been sucked in by the right-wing noise industry.
Beware,though. Facts can be denied and deferred for a while. Eventually, they assert themselves. That’s when butts get bit.
Justin Ogren
Hey man, it’s not just dead Iraqi soldiers, it’s the civilians.
Alot of people in Germany were thrown into war, alot of young ones died who never wanted to fight. But it had to be fought.
Did we need to fight the war in Iraq? Not at all. Because there is no justification with the removal of one man, especially when America really has no problem supporting other dictators. It’s only death and thousands more layers of it. This is not the way things get done, it’s not the way we change ideas in the world. Where’s the freedom in leaving a country broken with killing over 10,000 of their citizens, what the hell?
With Lieberman’s fierce, ridiculous attacks on the entertainment industry, I could never support him, as he tries to halt free speech and expression in film, music and video games. I mean this Emperor Palpatine lookin’ motherfucker would never receive a vote mine, even if he had Ian McDiarmid substitute for him on his sick days.
Oh man…once David Cross said selling drugs is the only way to make money in George Bush’s America……he’s really right. Economy right now is more unbalanced than lady justice viewing the O.J. case.
Dean
Harry Truman, SW? How many Dems would support him? Especially since he is characterized BY THE LEFT as:
The racist haberdasher who crisped a few tens of thousands of civilians in order to send a message to Moscow?
The guy who truly started the imperial presidency in foreign policy by dispatching troops without ANY Congressional declaration of war or fig-leaf (at least LBJ had the Gulf of Tonkin resolution), thus incurring the wrath of I.F. Stone?
The guy who didn’t stand up to McCarthy when McCarthy was just getting started? (Or, if you’re a real Lefty, the guy who didn’t stand up for the Rosenbergs.)
space
The Democrats are unfit to govern? Dude, lay off the balloon juice.
George Bush has the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. He has utterly failed to prosecute the war against Al Qaida. He has gotten the U.S. into an unnecessary war, which he has proceeded to lose in the most pathetic, unnecessary manner. Watching Iraq go down the crapper over the past year+ has been like watching a car crash in slo-, slo-, slo-motion.
Now I will grant you that the Democrats are much poorer campaigners. They could never manage to take the focus of the campaign off of any real issues and place it entirely on a bunch of lying vets and Dan Rather’s journalistic credibility.
But assuming, for the sake of argument, that Rather printed the memos himself on his shiny new Dell, WTF does that have to do with the fact that our present mis-leader has no clue about how to solve the Iraq problem? He won’t even admit there is a problem (“The NIE is just written by a bunch of pessimists.”) Of course he would never replace the people who he doesn’t seem trust to give him good intelligence. This is your monkey-boy leader at work.
Justin Ogren
Which gives us, the worst president, EVER!
You know he is the most protested man in the history of the world right?
space
And btw, citing the Wellstone memorial as an example of vitriol from the Left is a sure fire way to lose credibility. The faux-outrage of the Right was nothing more and nothing less than a disgusting display of the Right’s willingness to piss on the memory of a great American in order to win.
They simply made up b.s. about being booed and having things thrown at Republicans. Too disgusting.
John Cole
Whatever, Space- it was just spin.
this is why your party is sick- I saw the Wellstone funeral, and here was my reaction:
https://balloon-juice.com/archives/001031.html#001031
That was without getting my memos from rove.
It was a putrid display, and that you still do not recognize it and try to claim it was all a Republican smear is why the Democrats KEEP getting their ass kicked in every election.
Josh Martin
Oh man…once David Cross said selling drugs is the only way to make money in George Bush’s America……he’s really right. Economy right now is more unbalanced than lady justice viewing the O.J. case.
Since Bush was elected, I’ve graduated from law school and now make a handsome income. Although every penny of my disposable income goes to paying off debt, I haven’t had to sell drugs once.
Rick
If Dubya is the most protested President effort, then I take even greater pleaure in his efforts.
Because the flyblown protestors I’ve seen, even when sanitized by broadcast media, are a feckless, scary bunch. Except those big puppets; now those make a serious statement.
Cordially…
Bloggerhead
Notwithstanding the demonstrably ludicrous notion that how one campaigns has any bearing on one’s fitness to govern–to wit, Bush is a very capable campaigner, esp. when guided by a genius like Rove, but is perhaps the worst president in the last 80 years–I see no evidence that it is the negativity of the Kerry campaign that has caused this temporary dip in the polls.
Recall that in July, Kerry was up and rising, then the Slime Boaters came along spewing their horseshit, unrefuted for perhaps two weeks. That was the beginning of Kerry’s slide, and then by the time the press had shown the Slimers to be what they are, the Republican convention turned the focus away with 4 more days of relentless distortion and maligning.
In fact, I don’t see how anyone can say that the Kerry campaign has been especially negative during this brief slide, unless you somehow identify the apparent dirty tricks of the Killian memos with the Kerry campaign, but there is no evidence of that (though that won’t keep the right-wing wurlitzer from trumpeting a connection, I know).
That Kerry has been able to halt the slide in the last week appears not the result of negativity (though that’s what’s coming and will raise him back in the polls, I’d wager), but of the bad news coming out of Iraq–no, not from the press, but from the NIE–and the continuing ambivalence of the economic news.
Thanks for the advice, nonetheless, John. I know you’re just trying to save us from ourselves, but forgive me if I perceive it as you advising us to bring a knife to a gunfight. If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to see the Kerry campaign jump on Iraq and the economy with both feet, which you just know Joe Lockhart been brought in to do.
You remember Lockhart, right? He worked in Democratic campaigns that fought smears with prompt rebuttals, went negative when it had to and had the goods, and resulted in a two-term presidency that was one the most capable and successful in the last 80 years.
Justin Ogren
How many people really make handsome incomes Josh? Is it at the cost of prosecuting tens of thouasands of marijuana smokers?
Reckless scary bunch, are the real folks pissed off, pissed off at the state of the world. If things were even close to being slighty ‘alight’, there wouldn’t be thousands of protestors pissed off at this administration and the current state of the country and the world. There needs to be severe change…..and that’s not gonna happy with GW. He runs the country like a southern plantation.
shark
You remember Lockhart, right? He worked in Democratic campaigns that fought smears with prompt rebuttals, went negative when it had to and had the goods, and resulted in a two-term presidency that was one the most capable and successful in the last 80 years
Yesh, but Lockhart had Clinton then. I’ll take Lockhart and his guy vs Rove and our guy.
Bring it on? Bitch, it’s already been on!
shark
Reckless scary bunch, are the real folks pissed off, pissed off at the state of the world.
More like pissed off that a Republican is in charge, not them.
If things were even close to being slighty ‘alight’, there wouldn’t be thousands of protestors pissed off at this administration and the current state of the country and the world.
I agree, things aren’t “alright’ and haven’t been since 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists. And who gives a fig about losers who have all day to protest when the normal people have to work jobs?
There needs to be severe change…..
There is….we have a president who DOES SOMETHING instead of getting blowjobs from a fat intern. This is why people are upset…doing something always is going to upset someone
and that’s not gonna happy with GW. He runs the country like a southern plantation
Sorry, its the Democrats who keep the minorities on the plantation…
Justin Ogren
You gotta be stupid to think that all the president’s were faithful to their wives, shit I bet GW has asked Laura for a threesome once or twice.