csua.org/u/8xd -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/05/MNGJE8KA5V1.DTL
Chronicle Sections New York -- Two costly extravaganzas in New York City and Boston have revealed that, yes, there are two Americas: one that supports Democratic nominee John Kerry and the other President Bush. The conventions have set the stage -- Republicans will campaign on national security and Democrats on the economy. While some early polls show Bush may have gained from the convention, Republicans are not counting on that "bounce" to last long. With just two months left before voters decide who will be the next US president, Bush and Kerry remain locked in a pitched battle that both sides say will come down to door-to-door combat in the same battleground states that were battlegrounds when the campaign began. And in the national arena, the ferocity of the fight -- by Kerry to capture a sliver of undecided voters, and by Bush to mobilize Republican ranks -- will doubtless further inflame an already intensely polarized nation. Republicans left New York exuberant and ready to engage, having succeeded in binding the popular war on terror to the unpopular war in Iraq. They painted their man as a decisive, unwavering leader in historic times when the nation's future depends on firm resolve, and Kerry as a flip-flopper who would consult Parisian salons before defending America. Mustering every symbol of the great city to his cause, from the hole in the Manhattan skyline left by the collapse of the twin towers to his post-Sept. When "buildings fell," he declared in his acceptance speech, "a nation rose." Yet hardly had the balloons dropped when Kerry struck back hard: "Misleading our nation into war in Iraq," Kerry told a midnight rally in Springfield, Ohio, "makes you unfit to lead this nation." Defining the candidates The strategies of the two campaigns have now crystallized. Bush will define himself as commander in chief, while Republicans try to mobilize a vast ground campaign to get out their own votes. Kerry will sharpen his defense to blunt GOP attacks on his leadership capacity, coupling this with an assault on what the GOP convention revealed is Bush's soft underbelly: the economy and domestic policy. The fight will be taken to the wavering states that neither side can afford to lose -- places like Florida, Ohio, Oregon and New Mexico -- and where, despite months of campaigning, tens of millions of dollars of advertising and two conventions, both sides remain statistically neck and neck. Bush's travel schedule makes the GOP extravaganza in New York look more like a comma in a love letter to the Keystone State, with visits to Scranton and Erie before and after. Visits by surrogates, including the first lady and vice president, are planned for this week. Awaiting Bush's speech in the convention hall, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said that while "everyone knows" conventions seldom produce a lasting bounce in the polls, "We have a little bit of momentum. The polls are showing us up a little, and we haven't been up in a long, long time. "Pennsylvania is the most likely state (Bush) can take out of (the Kerry) column, and if he does that, it's over. Everybody knows that and that's why we're investing so much here." The ferocity of the struggle -- from former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's fiery attacks on Kerry's fitness to lead, to Kerry's ridicule of Vice President Dick Cheney's five Vietnam draft deferments -- will only intensify. After a month of withering GOP attacks on the Vietnam service by which Kerry had sought with his Boston salute to define himself, Kerry tapped sharp- tongued former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart as his chief spokesman. The campaign leapt Friday on a report of a middling 144,000 new jobs in July, the last jobs release before the election, calling it insufficient. Republicans, though, were all but giddy that it wasn't much lower given the summer pause in the economy. Lockhart all but conceded that Kerry cannot win the national security debate, and at best can try to keep his head above the waves of "wobbly" attacks from the GOP. Kerry needs to meet only a basic "threshold" of voter assurance that he is resolute enough to be commander in chief, Lockhart said, given Bush's "advantage of actually being commander in chief." Kerry is five or six points behind on national security, Lockhart conceded, but he insisted that Kerry is "still on the right side of that threshold." To blunt GOP attacks, the campaign will continue to "come back again and again to issues of national security," Lockhart said, but then "we think voters will turn in a different direction and turn to the economy." The GOP convention showed, Lockhart said, that Bush has no new ideas on domestic policy and "doesn't seem to get that millions of Americans are struggling out there, or even to be open to changing any of the policies he's pursued over the years." Indeed, any tour of Madison Square Garden frequently revealed that the economy is not the GOP's strong suit. Speakers largely glossed over it, though delegates from Midwestern manufacturing states readily admitted that jobs are a big issue there, and GOP operatives confirmed that their own polling showed as much. Bush attempted to address this in his acceptance speech, outlining a laundry list of rehashed domestic proposals aimed at fostering an "ownership society" -- from health savings accounts to partially privatized Social Security, an issue he campaigned on in 2000. His boldest initiative, tax reform, was not an initiative at all, but a call for a bipartisan commission to study how to simplify a tax code that Bush's own big tax measures -- stuffed with credits for all manner of activities -- has only made more complicated. But the fire of Bush's speech -- and the enthusiasm in the hall -- was saved for reference to Sept. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo, speaking for the Kerry campaign, said jobs are pre-eminent in Missouri, where yet another fierce battle is being waged for its 11 Electoral College votes. Republicans have scored with strong voter opposition to same-sex marriage. "We've been up there, we've been a little down, but it's always basically a tie and it's going to remain that way, in my view, to the end. "The jobs numbers we see today have an impact in the state," Gephardt said. "People don't talk first about terrorism or the war in Iraq. They talk about jobs, health care, rising gas prices, and they're plenty upset about it. It's a tie there now and it will turn into a Kerry victory." The Republican strategy all along, crafted by White House political czar Karl Rove, has been to get out the GOP vote for what he calls a "mobilization election." Rove eyes not only the 4 million evangelical Christians who stayed home in 2000 and favor Bush's proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, anti-abortion stance and other social issues, but millions of other conservatives who like tax cuts and a muscular national security posture. Democrats appear to have the upper hand on many demographics. Bush has not made big gains among the Latino population. Neither has he won over seniors, benefactors of his huge Medicare prescription drug benefit who also face a 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums for doctor visits next year. On the other hand, Bush is making inroads in the Jewish vote by his strong stand on Israel. "This is the Republican Jewish moment," declared Larry Greenfield, Southern California director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, at an event featuring Vice President Cheney. Greenfield said Bush won 19 percent of the Jewish vote last time but could top 25 percent this time. "This is the breakthrough moment because this president is so resolute in the war on terror, " Greenfield said. Polls are tight Early polls conducted during or right after the Republican convention showed Bush getting as much as an 8-point bounce. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last week that measured support for the candidates in several categories showed the race deadlocked with Bush just barely ahead of Kerry 48 to 47 percent, with 2 percent for independent Ralph Nader. But on the question of the country's direction, only 44 percent said they were satisfied and 54 percent were not. On Bush'...
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