This must be a shocking revelation to anyone who occasionally sees a television. Near- constant media reports of George Bush’s demise coupled with "analysts" saying it’s too-tough-to-call would have one believe we have a horse race.
Real analysis -- that is, something beyond checking the latest poll -- shows that we don’t.
July polls mean almost nothing. The historical variance between July polls and the actual election results show almost no predictive ability at all.
Even were they clairvoyant, an open-eyed analysis of the statistical “tie” would be that Kerry has not been able to take advantage of what amount to disasters (self-inflicted and otherwise) for the president. The economy has been soft at best. The Abu-Ghraib prison scandal rocked the country. The 9/11 Commission’s report found our intelligence structure in disarray. Never-ending news broadcasts play ubiquitous reports of dead American soldiers. A feature film, unprecedented in its sole purpose of discrediting a sitting administration, is playing to huge crowds.
At this point in the 1988 election, Michael Dukakis led polls by 15 points. That John Kerry has no clear lead now points to looming disaster.
There are three main reasons that Kerry will not win.
--Vision. Kerry hasn't expressed one. “I’m not George Bush” is not vision. Every successful presidential candidate in the television age has identified a direction for the country or the office. Not every American will agree with that direction, but there still must be one. Jimmy Carter would return honesty to the White House. Ronald Reagan would fight communism and the growth of government. For Bill Clinton it was “the economy, stupid.”
Kerry, unlike Clinton and Carter before their ascendance, sports a voting record that is much more liberal than most voters are comfortable with, once they know about it. The Bush campaign will make sure they do. Kerry knows this, and has taken recent positions that are at odds with his voting record. This compounds his inability to produce a clear vision that contrasts with George Bush's, and keeps him from giving the shrinking number of undecideds and independents a compelling reason to vote for Kerry. Anti-Bush votes could go to Ralph Nader or Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik. This year, that matters.
-- Sitting presidents don’t lose during war or foreign crisis. The exception to this was Jimmy Carter who, fairly or unfairly, was seen as doing too little about the Iran hostage situation. Kerry will have to show that George Bush is doing too little to fight terror, an assertion that sails against the Democratic tide saying the president is overdoing.
-- The Electoral College. The math doesn’t work. Post-war Democrats have won the presidency by cobbling together a coalition campaign that brought in the correct equation of states, and that equation always included the South. John Kennedy “did the math,” won southern states, taking a huge majority of electoral college votes despite a dead heat in the popular vote.
Kerry must win at least one state that Al Gore didn't, while keeping the rest. A quick refrain is “he’ll take Florida!” But even if he does, Kerry must also keep three states that Gore won by less than 1%: New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Will any of these states accept a northeastern liberal to the same degree they did the more “heartland” Al Gore? Or will Kerry waste precious resources on the myth that he might win North Carolina or Arizona?
Kerry needs a vision (fast), a message on the war that perfectly balances support for the troops with hard criticism of Bush's policies, and a near-perfect campaign that peaks in the correct states in November. Not only that, he needs a blunder or two from the president along with some luck, perhaps (morbidly) in the form of minor economic decline later in the year.
All of those things are not going to happen, yet all of them must if Kerry is to win.
So what’s a Democrat to do?
Congress remains a battleground. There are many lower races around the country that could keep the Democrats competitive with Republicans for the time being. Despite historic parity between the parties, Democrats have had a slow decline at the polls that started in the 1980s. That decline has not stopped. Unless there is a reversal, the Democratic Party could be relegated to minority status for a generation or more.
Focusing on a losing battle for the presidency will continue that decline.
