I usually prefer to post about facts rather than polls, but I saw this in the Washington Post this morning that just confirms to me the r's are growing more desperate, and grim, by the day. It starts out as the standard "Kerry was here, Bush was here" horse-race piece, but a couple of passages stood out to me:
GOP officials who talked to Bush-Cheney campaign leaders said the leaders have grown more worried about Ohio, Florida and other key states where Bush lacks a lead with just 10 days until the election. A poll by Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center, completed Thursday night, found Kerry leading 49
percent to 43 percent among registered voters, with a margin of error of five percentage points.
And in New Mexico and nationwide, they're already bracing themselves for bad news:
One Republican official described the mood at the top of the campaign as apprehensive. " 'Grim' is too strong," the official said. "If we feel this way a week from now, that will be grim."
...The Republican official said polling for Bush showed him in a weaker position than some published polls have indicated, both nationally and in battlegrounds. In many of the key states, the official said, Bush is below 50 percent, and he is ahead or behind within the margin of sampling error -- a statistical tie.
"There's just no place where they're polling outside the margin of error so they can say, 'We have this state,' " the official said. "And they know that an incumbent needs to be outside the margin of error."
It's increasingly clear the bushies have abandoned reaching out to swing voters and they're stuck trying to motivate their base. Since they've rightly concluded that their ideas aren't winning converts, all they can do is try to supress our turnout (through court actions, sympathetic secretaries of state, and of course scare tactics in the media) and gin up theirs.
Frankly, I'm thinking the wolves ad was a huge mistake for them -- not only in the content, but also in the timing. A few weeks ago, before the debates and after the rnc, bush is perceived as "ahead" and this is a finishing blow. Now, since the wolves aren't all that intimidating, it just looks like a lame and desperate attempt to scare people. Odd, since this ad was reportedly "in the can" for months.
Next up for the repo's -- they'll start dismissing the claims of our unnamed republican (after they find his identify and crush him), and give us a mixture of "we've got the momentum" (which we all now know is a crock) and "a vote for kerry is a vote for the terrorists."
