September 02, 2004
Kerry Team Needs Swifter Reactions
Posted by | 10:08 AM
Political reporters and campaign consultants in both parties are abuzz about a possible shakeup inside the Kerry campaign. The prospect is pretty remarkable, given that the Democratic nominee is running only a couple of percentage points below where he was three weeks ago.
Indeed, an analysis of public polls conducted during August by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz shows that in the first half of the month, John Kerry averaged 47.2 percent, while President Bush averaged 45.3 percent -- giving the challenger a 1.9-point edge. During the second half, Kerry slipped to 45.7 percent while Bush ticked up to 45.6 percent -- leaving Kerry just one-tenth of a point ahead.
Does declining 1.5 percentage points as his rival gained three-tenths of a point mean that Kerry needs to reshuffle his campaign team? That's debatable. But there is no doubt that Kerry has suffered a loss of momentum.
What's more, a week-by-week analysis would undoubtedly show that Kerry's strength in the fourth week of August was less than it was in the third. Thus, the widespread view that Kerry let the attacks from the pro-Bush Swift Boat Veterans go unanswered for too long is correct. Many of the accusations were ultimately refuted, and at least partially neutralized, but not before one of Kerry's strengths coming out of the Democratic convention was diminished.
During this campaign, the Kerry team has been more than willing to hit back, but usually after some delay and rarely within the same news cycle, even though campaign pros think that hitting back immediately is most effective.
Outsiders don't know whether the lag time is caused by a problem in Kerry's communications shop or within the research team that must prepare the counterattack, or both. But the informed speculation is that the problem is an unwillingness among higher-ups to pull the trigger -- to make quick, crisp decisions. That is hardly a new complaint about Kerry campaigns. The senator from Massachusetts has long been criticized for having an unusually wide circle of advisers, an approach that slows decision-making. The decision-making process on the Bush side is much more efficient.
One Democratic organization with fast reaction time is America Coming Together, the 527 group that peppers the news media with extremely pointed and timely attacks on Bush. Yesterday, for example, ACT's Jim Jordan, Kerry's original campaign manager, sent out a tart press release pointing out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had just issued numbers showing July job losses, city by city. Jordan pointed out that Columbus, Ohio, which the president was visiting yesterday, had lost 2,400 jobs in July, bringing to 11,300 the number of jobs that Ohio's capital had lost during Bush's presidency.
Jordan next pointed to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where Bush is set to attend a midnight rally after tonight's acceptance speech. Combined, those cities lost 4,300 jobs during July, bringing their total losses back up to 4,800. Next, Jordan pointed to Milwaukee, where the president is planning to go tomorrow and where 7,000 jobs were lost in July, for a total of 12,300.
The Kerry campaign almost seems to do better when it outsources tasks.
Clearly, some fine-tuning of the Kerry campaign is in order, but Kerry should remember that this is still the same campaign operation that he had when Bush's prospects looked worse than they do now. Just as there is a danger that a driver will jerk the steering wheel when just a small correction is needed, overreaction is a definite danger for Kerry. Nobody rooting for Bush was calling for the heads of adviser Karl Rove or campaign manager Ken Mehlman last month, when Bush was about where Kerry is today.
This race is far from over. The latest White House Scoreboard, maintained by The Hotline, shows that the most recent state polls put Kerry ahead in 16 states, with 218 electoral votes, and Bush ahead in 13 states, with 197 votes. Of course, 270 electoral votes are needed to win.
For me, the most important number of the week will be tomorrow's Labor Department jobs report for August. Several observers say that if a net 200,000 jobs were created last month, that announcement will give Bush a real exclamation point at the end of his convention week. A gain of fewer than 100,000 would put a real damper on the Bush campaign, they say.
Those predictions sound about right to me. A good jobs report would break a string of worrisome economic news. A bad report will definitely hurt Bush. Either way, the Bush camp will be watching to see Kerry's next move.
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Hey Charlie,
I thought that the presidential campaign operations are not suppose to coordinate or in your words "outsource" with 527s. I see once again that the media operates under a double standard with Democrats.
Posted by: Jerry Berger at September 2, 2004 11:49 AMI can't figure it out. It seems to me that the Kerry campaign and the 527s are missing a real opportunity to attack Bush's core strenghts: The war on terrorism and his seeming connection to blue collar americans.
This could be done with ads tying Bush to the Saudi family in particular Prince Bandar (Bush) and Texas petro billionaires. I read recently that all of the members of the president's immediate family received lavish gifts from Bandar. The fact that the majority of the 911 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia and the presidential family has a strong personal and financial relationship with that country (A) calls into question the entire war on terrorism and (B) the "oridinary guy" image that the president tries to put forward.
This becomes more potent when it is tied to the shadowy Texas "petrobillionares" that have funded the Bush careers and the swift boat ads. (whether Crowe and Perry are really petrobillionaires is another issue that the democrats need not worry about) Witness the Cheney videotape that came out shortly before the 2000 election where he tells members of the petroleum industry that oil prices are moving in the right direction (up) -to my astonsishment this was never used and might have tipped enough votes to give Gore the whitehouse.
This is just one fertile avenue of attack. I am astounded that neither the campaign nor the 527s will use it. More direct and less substantive attacks on Bush's guard service are old news --the statute of limitations expires on these things once a president is elected.
Posted by: Texas Liberal at September 2, 2004 01:34 PMTHE $87 BILLION FIASCO
The problem with this is prior to the vote, there was an amendment to it that
stated: pay for it with a rollback of tax cuts for the wealthy and future
Iraqi oil revenues.
President Bush said he would VETO a bill with this in it. No Amendments allowed!
.
1. President Bush will sent troops to Iraq that sacrifice lives and limbs;
but he and his Republican friends will not sacrifice a few dollars to pay
for the war. How much are our troops’ lives and limbs worth.
2. Add to the debt of the country and pay interest on it.
3. When the troops come home and start paying taxes again
They will be paying for the war too.
4. They get to fight the war and pay for it too.
5. What a great deal!
This seems to me to be one of the great presidential hypocrisies of our time.
I applaud Kerry and Edwards for not condoning this hypocrisy by voting against it; especially since they both knew it would pass without their votes.
This needs to be out there so people see it.
Maybe it would be proper to clarify the fact that "outsourcing" is your choice of words. There's nothing to suggest coordination between the Kerry campaign and ACT, yet some bloggers are already holding on to that phrase.
Posted by: Juan Buhler at September 2, 2004 04:56 PMCharlie Cook is nearly always correct, but seemingly shares the media's general misunderstanding of so-called "official" BLS job numbers. For those of us in business, BLS jobs' numbers are a very blurry snapshot. By definition, they fail to take into account 30 to 40% of "non-farm income," i.e., consulting, transactional-domestic outsourcing, etc. Meant nothing 20 yars ago, but in our every changing post-tech economy; the old fgashjioned way of measuring jobs' numbers really deosn't cut it for the large plurality of us in business who actually follow and are impressed by such things. It's like politicians continually talking about the "45 million" healthcare un-insured (CMS's actual number is 38 million) without explaining that 7 to 10 million of the 38 are Americans who do not want and will not accept health insurance, i.e., some helmet-less bike riders, etc. They're foolish, but what can you say. It's a free country. In short, one can assure that statistics
will support any politician's critique; but one can't gaurantee that most voters' eyes won't just glaze over the weekly battle over jobs' numbers. Businesses have more reliable measurements, and what we see is an un-expectedly booming recovery.
