Reply #3: Canceling Influence [View All]

[RoyGBiv]

From my observations, they tend to cancel each other out. The conventions today -- the televised portions of them anyway -- merely serve to energize the party. So, the Dems get a bump from theirs, and then the Repugs get a bump later that puts it back about to where it was.

As another said in this thread, the debates come after that, and they do more to define things. It's also after the conventions that the slash and burn stage of campaign ads will start flooding the airwaves.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I'm thinking that the RNC convention being in New York could backfire on them. New Yorkers aren't real happy with Junior at the moment. He's consistently cut their funding for anti-terrorism, which in turn has hurt the fire department and police. Repugs in New York are trying like hell to spin this or sweep it under the rug, but the people being affected by this are represented by unions who aren't letting it die. There will be a lot of anti-Bush sentiment surrounding the convention.