Dick Morris is one of the commentators we link to on a "for what it's worth" basis. Sometimes he makes sense, sometimes he seems wildly off base. But he's generally interesting.

Today, Morris argues that John Kerry is in deep trouble. First, Morris believes the polls that give President Bush a double-digit lead. This issue comes down to whether a pollster should weight his poll results so as to achieve a pre-determined mix of Republicans and Democrats, and thus avoid "oversampling" of one party or the other. Morris thinks not:

We feel that political party is not a demographic, like gender or race or age. If the survey finds more Republicans than usual, we think it's because the country has become more Republican, so we treat the result as a indicator of national mood, not of statistical error.

Time and Newsweek both picked up major moves toward the GOP in the wake of the convention.

Morris applauds the Kerry campaign's apparent resolve to talk less about Vietnam, and more about the economy. However, he sees limitations on this approach:

[I]n its focus on the economy, the Kerry team is likely to lose sight of one basic problem: In running against a bad economy, it is helpful if the economy is bad. With an unemployment rate approaching 5 percent, they'll have a hard time making the case.

Morris also wonders about the loyalty of new Kerry advisers Paul Begala and James Carville:

Both men are primarily loyal to the Clintons — Bill and Hillary. Clearly, the former president would like the former first lady to be president in 2008. And a Kerry victory would stand in the way.

An axiom of politics is that generally you want your campaign advisers to hope that you win — and Carville and Begala may not pass that standard.

The next scheduled event with the potential to move votes is the debates, but Morris doesn't expect them to help Kerry, because anything he says about Iraq will alienate a significant number of his supporters. It is no doubt true that Kerry's inconsistencies on Iraq have resulted in part from his effort to please both the anti-war core of the Democratic Party and the more responsible Democrats and independents he needs to attract to win the election. But I would add a second reason why the debates won't help Kerry: most people who haven't seen him in action will be surprised at how poorly he does.

Via Real Clear Politics.

UPDATE: Deborah Orin notes this morning that the Republican convention gave President Bush a big boost in the midwest. A new Gallup/CNN poll shows Bush with a 14-point lead in Missouri and an eight-point lead in Ohio. The poll has Pennsylvania still a dead heat.

Posted by John at 07:52 AM  |    |  

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