The Post-Convention Blues

September 8 2004
Counterbias.com
Scott C. Smith

Recent polls from Newsweek and Time have revealed George W. Bush pulling ahead of John Kerry by two-digits for the first time in months. As a Kerry supporter I’m hoping the trend will reverse. There is some good news in polling: Gallup’s post-GOP convention poll shows George Bush with only a two-point bounce, which is very low when you examine the numbers from previous polls. For instance, Bill Clinton received a fifteen-point bounce following the ’92 convention, compared to George H.W. Bush’s five-point bounce.

Unfortunately, the Newsweek poll, for instance, has George W. Bush leading John Kerry in many areas, including, amazingly, the economy and the handling of the war in Iraq. 

As of this writing, we have reached the horrible milestone of 1,000 dead U.S. troops in Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. This should work against George W. Bush, but unfortunately John Kerry has not focused on the issues of the war in Iraq and domestic policy.

For the most part, Kerry has campaigned mainly on the platform of his service in Vietnam. Groups like the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth have wounded Kerry politically.

The New York Times reported on September 6 that Bill Clinton spoke with Kerry for ninety minutes over the telephone from Clinton’s hospital bed, as Clinton awaited heart bypass surgery. According to the Times, Clinton advised Kerry to turn his focus away from his Vietnam service and instead campaign on Bush’s poor domestic record. 

Kerry is doing more than taking Clinton’s advice; he’s bringing in some of Bill Clinton’s campaign consultants, including the winning team of James Carville and Paul Begala of the famed Clinton 'war room'. The Ragin’ Cajun and Begala will take a more active role in Kerry’s campaign. John Kerry has already brought in other members of Clinton’s team, including spokesman Joe Lockhart, former White House aide Joel Johnson and political consultant Doug Sosnik. 

John Kerry is known for coming back from behind to win a political race, as he did in 1996 against popular Massachusetts Governor William Weld.

Many Democrats have been concerned with the direction the Kerry campaign has taken so far. I’m one of them. As we saw in the 2000 campaign with Al Gore, the “so-called liberal media” is not helping John Kerry.  The Swift Boat Vets are all over the media and their campaign of misinformation has worked. Few newspapers have challenged their claims.

The “liberal” media has not been very focused on the war in Iraq, instead opting to cover a war from thirty-five years ago and whether or not one man earned the medals and ribbons he was awarded. The Washington press corps does not even bother to ask about weapons of mass destruction anymore, nor is the name Osama Bin Laden mentioned. Like good magicians, the Bush administration has misdirected our attention, changing the war in Iraq from a war to disarm a regime that could provide weapons to terrorists to a war to “liberate” the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator, all within the boundaries of Bush’s never-ending war on terrorism.

The U.S. economy is another area that should have knocked Bush down in the polls. While the national unemployment rate has dropped to 5.4%, other reports indicate that wages have remained stagnant. More Americans are in poverty, with the rate of poverty increasing in 2003 from 12.1% to 12.5%, according to U.S. census data. That’s nearly 36 million Americans living in poverty. Additionally, the ranks of the uninsured increased in 2003, from 15.2% to 15.6%, with a total of 45 million uninsured. Add to that nearly one million jobs lost since George W. Bush took office, and the slap in the face to senior citizens on fixed incomes with the largest increase in Medicare premiums in the program’s history for 2005. These are the issues John Kerry should focus on. The only thing Bush has to run on is his self-proclaimed “leadership” in the war against terrorism. Bush can even hit the campaign trail and claim the economy is improving, despite the data that indicates otherwise, with a media not bothering to challenge his statements or do any actual reporting. Bush knows the media is on his side.

I believe that we’re going to see a new Kerry campaign soon, one that is focused on real issues and on George W. Bush’s record. And when that happens, I think George W. Bush will finally be put on the defensive. It’s about time.