News Bush or Kerry

What is your point?

Why don't you come back in 3 months?

 

Three months? That's extreme. 6 weeks should tell the story.

Based on economic indicators, Bush is looking much better than he did two months ago. Consumer comfort index (based on how people feel about their current economic situation) is still negative, but not nearly as bad as it was in June. Consumer confidence index (based on what people expect their economic situation to be in 6 months) is the highest its been in two years (100 is baseline and the current 106.2 is pushing far enough above the baseline to be considered a solid indicator for Bush). The most negative indicator is jobs. The economy has to add an average of about 169,000 jobs a month from April to October to be a positive - there's only been three months during Bush's entire 43 month presidency that that's happened. You have a mixed economy in which there's a large disparity between the economic winners and losers - in other words, economic improvements pull in fewer votes if the economy's only improving for a portion of the voters.

Iraq is beating Bush up. The reasons advertised for invading Iraq have turned out to be vapor. The things pushed as pros now would not have been enough to win support for the invasion. Worse yet, things have not gone well. When we get militarily involved in nations where we have no critical interests, we either beat the crap out of our opponent (Serbia) or we leave as soon as we get a bloody nose (Beirut, Somalia). Invading Iraq has pushed us into a fight we can't afford to leave and we don't like having to fight with a bloody nose.

One big sign is the Bush campaign confidence level. Granted, the spring and summer have been brutal for the Bush camp, but they've given up on selling their own candidate pretty early and are already going with the "Kerry's even worse than me!" slogan. That's a subtle, but significant difference from 2000's winning campaign slogan, "At least I'm better than Gore!" It's goal seems to be to make Republican defectors running away from Bush so depressed that they just don't vote. (Of course, the flip side is that it just might open up old wounds for the McCain 2000 supporters and rile them up).

The polls in the swing states are looking pretty grim for Bush, but the consumer confidence index would suggest that they'll improve. Finally having consumer confidence index go over 100 right before the Republican convention is a huge plus.

People vote for the future more than the present. The key is the consumer confidence index for September (which comes out early October). If that's still over 105 (which is kind of like a high 'C' by the way), job growth suddenly and dramatically rises to 'average' level, the Bush administration claims "Peace is at hand" in Iraq, and enough mud has been slung back and forth to reduce voter turnout in November, it's probably enough to eek out a close victory for Bush.

Bad numbers at the end of September (if the job growth numbers stay weak, then 106 is a peak rather than a sign of the economy turning the corner) and who knows what's going to happen next in Iraq, and Kerry wins in an election not as close as people expected.

 

I guess it's like betting...without the money. It's interesting to see what people predicted in the past...

Recently, I found myself looking at some really old posts and discovered stuff like the following, from March 2003 :

# "Heh. We'll see. In two days when the Marine Corps gets to Bagdhad, people will be dancing in the streets (just like in Afghanistan) and trading their children for American flags."

# "Well, like I've been predicting...looks like the reason which we've abandoned the "Shock and Awe" military plan is that the Pentagon is in capitulation talks with the leaders of the Republican Guard.

The regular grunts are already laying down their weapons in droves.

With luck, this will all be over very soon.

Now, who of those who are against this war want to make a bet against me that we won't find any illegal weapons that they've been lying about?"

# "By my guess, more than 90 percent of the Iraqi people hate Saddam Hussein and the allied forces will soon be seen as liberators, just as they were in Kuwait."

And now that I've said this, perhaps people will be more reluctant to commit I hope not.

I hope this doesn't derail this thread.

 

Kerry will continue to fall further behind, Bush will win, not overwhelmingly but comfortably. All polls based on likely voters are weighted heavily with Democratic voters which will account for an approximately 6-10% error in polling results. =)

 

Thanks, omniscient kat.

 

mreeooow! :surprise:

 

I am actually supporting Kerry for the simple fact that I dislike Bush, but to be realistic, I'm beginning to doubt that Kerry will pull through. He should probably fire his new campaign manager (or whoever's idea it was to put his service in Vietnam as a centerpiece to his campaign.) The swiftboat veterans hardly even have a respectable case against Kerry, but that's still enough to put doubts in people's minds, ala Kobe Bryant losing all of his endorsements even before it was proven he did anything wrong. They put all of their eggs in one basket, without taking Bush to task on what he's been up to for the past four years, and they will suffer for it.

 

The Reds are morons and the Blues are pussies. We need greens !

 

While that may be true, how can you know that it's not possible that many more likely voters are voting Democrat? After all, there are more registered Democrats in the USA than Republicans, I wouldn't doubt that many more Democrats are likely to vote than Republicans this year.

I think Kerry's going to win, because while this smear crap may be working now, when it comes to the Debates, Bush will not attack his military record, and when issues come up, I have no doubt Kerry will convince enough people of Bush's failings and his potential superiority.

 

Also, I think that polls are sometimes misleading as people may say their voting one way when polled and vote another on election day.

 

Greens are both.

 

I think its close enough to the election to go out on a limb and say Kerry will definitely win.

With today's consumer confidence index dropping back below 100, July's 106.2 was just an optimistic peak.

Job growth has just been too slow to save Bush's job. It would take something very drastic to keep voter opinion from following the economic indicators.

 

He cheated on his wife...

 

I don't mean to hijack this thread or anything, but even if he cheated on his wife, what does that have to do with endorsing shoes? If you were going to a buy a product endorsed by him, but then found out, that say, he's not a big fan of taking showers, or he never returns his video rentals on time, is that going to stop you?

 

Off-topic, but,

Kobe didn't lose his shoe endorsement. He's still with Nike Basketball.

He lost his McDonald's and Sprite endorsement.

 

Thanks for the correction, Dagenais .