http://www.ecnnews.com/cgi-bin/04/n/nstory.pl?fn-ncoldn16Column: Top ten reasons Kerry will beat George Bush
By David Nyhan
Ten reasons why I think John Kerry will win the White House:
1.) Elected incumbents who win second terms do so via landslide: FDR, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton.
There is no landslide in sight for W. He runs slightly behind, slightly ahead, or dead even, a perilous state for an incumbent this late in the game.
2.) The demographic listed as "undecided" by pollsters, as many as 25 percent of the total according to some of the bean-counters in Pollster World, vastly overstates the potential of so-called undecided voters.
They've had four years to decide on this second President Bush; if they're not for him, they're not really undecided. They just haven't been convinced yet by Kerry.
Kerry has more upside with these voters than Bush, whose record, unless you earn over $200,000 a year and love your tax breaks, is not one you'd prefer to run on. He can only win by frightening the voters about his opponent.
3.) Kerry has a hidden vote.
The vast majority of more than 40 last-minute polling surveys in 2000 predicted a Bush victory in the popular vote. It never happened, primarily because of late-deciding voters, many of them blue-collar, working-class women. These people are hard to poll, and tend not to show up in the pre-election surveys. They have too much on their plates to pay much attention to politics until the very end of the campaign.
They're the women who, in Jesse Jackson's phrase, have to "take the early bus." They broke heavily, late, for Al Gore, winner of more than half a million more votes than Bush. A similar tide of 11th-hour late-deciders could swamp Bush and perhaps endanger his precarious grip on control of the U.S. Senate.
4.) Telephone surveys of likely voters are hampered by the barriers of answering machines, unlisted phone numbers, and the cell phone wall.
Many young people in particular have abandoned land lines, and so are unreachable by pollsters. They tend to be less conservative on social issues, and thus presumably more amenable to Kerry. And a lot of the 45 million Americans without health insurance also have no land-line phone; they are less likely to vote Bush.
5.) Televised debates tend to help the challenger; that is their history since Kennedy-Nixon 44 years ago.
Kerry was widely perceived to have out-performed Bush in their first encounter, viewed by 58 million people. It afforded Kerry his single best opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the incumbent. Voters who were already cool to Bush, but not yet decided on Kerry, got to sample his poise, articulateness and policies.
Bush performed a lot better in the second debate, but Kerry's polling bounce from the first debate underscores the history: That the first debate, the one most watched, is the most influential because the lesser-known candidate gets the kind of attention only presidents normally merit. It becomes a Pepsi-vs.-Coke comparison, instead of a No-name-vs.-Coke contest.
6.) Ralph Nader's votes in Florida and New Hampshire handed Bush the White House last time. Hostility to Nader's quixotic quest this time has kept him off the ballot in a dozen states.
In New Hampshire, where Nader's 22,198 votes four years ago enabled Bush to beat Gore by a slim 7,211 votes, Nader only got on the ballot thanks to money and hired workers given him by Republicans working for Bush. But history is unkind to third-party candidates. They tend to implode the second time around, and Nader's role as the spoiler of 2000 should be substantially diminished.
Nader drew more than 10,000 zealots in Boston four years ago; he got 100 students at UNH last week. Ralph is disappearing in the Corvair's rear-view mirror, his campaign now unready at any speed.
7.) The substantial increase in voter registration in many of the so-called swing states bodes well for the Democrats, who've mounted well-financed registration drives bankrolled by labor unions, so-called 527 independent expenditure outfits, and a good chunk of the $20 million put up by George Soros, the billionaire financier who argues that Bush has made the world a much more dangerous place.
8.) Turnout should be substantially higher this time.
Last time turnout was a shade over 51 percent of age-eligible voters. Unease over the three wars — Iraq, Afghanistan, and the one on terror — and the job-shy economic recovery, which leaves Bush the first president since Herbert Hoover to close his term with a net loss of jobs, should boost turnout dramatically. Gasoline prices over $2 per gallon will also hurt Bush.
If turnout approaches the 55 or 56 percent that seems conceivable, Democrats should benefit handsomely.
9.) Minorities are mobilized like never before. Thousands of African-Americans were disenfranchised in Florida last time. That's become a rallying cry. Hispanics have been registering at record levels in some states where Democrats are mounting strong challenges, like Colorado and Ohio.
10.) Bush has become the most divisive president of the modern era, more detested in some quarters than Nixon.
His negative campaign versus Kerry, typified by the "flip-flop" accusations and the Swift Boat veterans' ads that stalled Kerry's post-convention campaign, have tended to further polarize voters. The GOP effort to turn Kerry into the political equivalent of Scott Peterson carries a downside. Incumbents who look desperate down the stretch — think Jimmy Carter, or Bush — tend to run out of gas on Election Day. Mud-throwers tend to get mussed up.
It's a telling sign that the incumbent is just not up to the job. If I had one piece of advice for Kerry, it would be to turn the President's negative campaign upside down, by running an ad saying:
George Bush has bragged for three years that Osama bin Laden can run, but he cannot hide. Well, bin Laden ran and hid all that time ... but he's not hiding in Iraq, he's said to be on the Afghan border. Now, desperate because he's on the verge of losing, Mr. Bush says of my campaign, "He can run, but he cannot hide."
Mr. President, we were both at Yale around the same time during Vietnam. I ran to Vietnam, to the sound of the guns, and picked up an M-16. You went to Alabama and Harvard Business School, while Dick Cheney was picking up five draft deferments, his excuse being "I had other priorities."
So George, tell me this: Who was running? And who was hiding?
I'm John Kerry, and I approved this message.
Veteran Boston political columnist David Nyhan is a regular contributor to Viewpoint.
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