Trench Warfare 2004
By Grover Norquist

On May 10, pollster John Zogby boldly predicted: "John Kerry will win the election."

 

He reported that in his latest poll only 43 percent of voters believed Bush deserves to be re-elected, and 51 percent said it's time for someone new. Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie, with very few undecided voters (who historically tend to be against the incumbent when they finally make up their minds). Among voters who cite the economy as most important, Kerry leads Bush 54 to 35 percent; those who cite Iraq also favor Kerry 54 to 35 percent; and those who cite the general war on terrorism prefer Bush 64 to 30 percent. In April, the proportion of Americans who cite Iraq as their top concern rose from 11 to 20 percent. Zogby states that Kerry has been a "good closer"--at least in Massachusetts elections and within the Democratic Presidential primary--and posits that even the improving economic news is too late to save Bush.

 

This writer looks at that same polling data and the current landscape and sees an increasingly likely Bush victory.

 

The Gallup poll had Bush and Kerry at 49 to 48 percent in the first week of February, and 48 to 47 percent in the first week of May. Between those two surveys, anti-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke published a book undermining the President as a leader in the war on terrorism, the 9/11 hearings further questioned the Bush administration's preparation and response to terrorism, American deaths in Iraq climbed sharply, and horrific photos of idiot sadism in an American-run prison were released. Yet the Bush-Kerry polling numbers didn't budge.

 

From this, we learn that candidate George W. Bush does not have a glass jaw. And the 2004 election begins to look like World War I trench warfare, where month-long artillery barrages and attacks fail to move the battle lines. Why don't war, terrorism, and foreign policy news move voters? Perhaps because America is not at war.

 

Yes, there are more than 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war news is a constant presence on television. But there is no draft, nor even fear of one. This contrasts with Vietnam, where every year 2 million 18-year-old males and their families and friends watched the draft lottery to see if they would be sent into the fray. That makes this war less real to many Americans.

 

The increased focus on Iraq has given Ralph Nader what he lacked: a rationale for his campaign. Nader is now the "peace candidate" and potential home for disaffected Dean voters who see Kerry and Bush as equally committed to continuing the Iraq occupation. Further problems in Iraq might benefit Nader rather than Kerry.

 

One wild card: How would another terrorist attack on America move voters? One could imagine this breaking either way--highlighting Bush's admonition that the world is too dangerous to leave to liberal Democrats, or supporting Kerry's claim that Bush has not done enough to stop such an attack.

 

The prime minister of Spain didn't lose because voters were cowed by a terrorist attack on Madrid, but because of his own poor reaction--falsely claiming it was committed by Basque separatists. Similarly, if the Bush campaign suggested the terrorists used an attack to vote for Kerry, or Kerry blamed Bush for the acts of terrorists, voters would react poorly. The first campaign to speak publicly following an attack on the U.S. could lose.

 

If an unrelenting series of assaults on Bush's leadership over Iraq and foreign policy has failed to break his Presidency, what will happen on the economic front? Unlike Iraq, one can now predict with some certainty how the economy will play out over the next six months.

 

GDP has been growing at an average quarterly rate of 5.5 percent, 1.1 million jobs have been created since August, and 340,000 jobs were created in March, followed by another 288,000 in April. Between now and the election there will be five more monthly announcements of job creation that should average 250,000 to 300,000 every month. How will Kerry's current lead on "ability to handle the economy" hold up in the wake of economic reality?

 

The Kerry campaign has tried its hardest to undermine Bush's perceived strength as a leader in the war on terror and the Iraq war. This has not moved voters.

The campaign now turns to the issue of job creation and tax cuts. These issues do move voters, and the trend favors Bush.