Kerry Bounce Or Not

Geopolitical Diary:
Monday, Aug. 2, 2004 August 02, 2004

Americans got their first glimpse of the shape of the presidential campaign on Sunday. The first polls following the Democratic convention have appeared, showing that Sen. John Kerry received little if any bounce from the event. In addition, Department of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge went on TV to announce that an al Qaeda threat had been detected, targeting business and quasi-government organizations in New York and Washington. These included the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C., the New York Stock Exchange and -- for reasons we are still trying to grasp -- the Prudential building in Newark, N.J. What Prudential or Newark have done to tick off al Qaeda is not immediately clear, but it must have been pretty bad.

A Newsweek poll released on Saturday and taken right after the Democratic convention showed Kerry receiving a four-point bounce after the convention: Kerry with 49 percent of the vote, President George W. Bush with 42 and independent candidate Ralph Nader with 3 percent.

This compared to a Kerry lead of 47-44-3 in the same poll prior to the convention. The bounce was about what we would have expected, given the polarization of the electorate. There are very few voters up for grabs: Bush doesn't go much below 42 percent, and the convention pushed Kerry's support to the limit.Then something interesting happened: Polls taken a day or two later showed Kerry's bounce dissolving. A CNN-USA Today poll taken a day later than the Newsweek survey had Bush leading Kerry 50-47. Among likely voters, Bush was behind by 2 points. This means that the candidates are in a dead tie, since all the numbers are within the margin of error of the poll. So, the important news is that the Democratic convention not only didn't give Kerry much of a bounce, but what bounce he had seems to have dissipated almost immediately.

The Democratic convention reflected Kerry's strategic problem: His core base of support is built around Michael Moore Democrats -- voters who have been utterly alienated by Bush. Like Clinton-haters, these voters intensely personalize the election and are extremely suspicious of any move that Kerry makes that appears to be buying into any Bush position. This is an extremely volatile base that can bleed off rapidly if it concludes that Kerry is a Bush clone -- they can move toward Nader or stay at home. Kerry has to hold this base -- but if he merely holds this segment, he loses. He must pick up another 6 percent. But that 6 percent dislikes the stridency of the Democratic left.

They are open to the view that Kerry is more competent in carrying out Bush's policies, but not to a repudiation of those policies outright. Kerry could not find a way to reconcile his two needs at the convention. What the weekend has shown is that Bush can remain fairly passive. The dynamic works against Kerry, whose challenge will be to figure out a way to keep his voters locked in while moving to the center. We don't think we are exaggerating when we say the success of Michael Moore's vision of George W. Bush may have done more than anything else to help his re-election. By fueling the most extreme vision of Bush among Kerry's support base, Moore deprived Kerry of much room for maneuver.

If Bush is the monster Moore portrays him to be, anything less than absolute opposition is unacceptable among Kerry supporters. If all Kerry has to offer is absolute opposition, Bush wins. Kerry will have to reshape the psychology of his base, which will not be easy to do.That was particularly demonstrated by Sunday's terrorism alert, when Ridge announced intelligence pointing to a pending attack. An interesting point here is that the Bush administration can push Kerry off the front page and off the first five minutes of news whenever it wants to. Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of voters believe there is a major threat from al Qaeda, the administration can rivet all attention there at will.

Given that there is enough intelligence at any point to indicate that al Qaeda is about to poison all the cheese in Wisconsin or sink the Statue of Liberty, when to call an alert is pretty much up to Homeland Defense. It isn't that the alert isn't valid; it's just that there is a degree of flexibility in calling one. Kerry not only doesn't get a major bounce, not only doesn't hold it for more than a day, but by Sunday, he is pushed out of the public mind by Tom Ridge.Kerry has got to change the game somehow.

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