Although it's only the sort of newspaper that the Flown-Over Proles read, USA Today is reporting on a poll that says
Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' impressions of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds.
In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.
The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.
The change in support was within the poll's margin of error of +/-4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn't gained ground during his convention.
Nevertheless, Bush is still struggling against some poor job approval ratings, which never seem to stay above 50 percent. The pundits say this is the biggest indicator of a President's re-election prospects.
But maybe enough of the electorate see that Kerry is using his Viet Nam record not like the proud achievement it is, but as a club to bludgeon Bush with and to pre-empt the notion that he is weak on defense and intelligence. The American people would've seen that fact had Kerry chosen to include something of it in that four-day infomercial last week.
Don't let him run away from his record, Mr. President. He's counting on a whole lot of collective amnesia to sneak past the wire.