> Read the latest polls and felt sick to my stomach. ck: John, all the polls announced over NPR in California, for the past couple of weeks, have indicated that Kerry is significantly behind Bush, particularly since the Republican convention--and that nearly half of all Americans still believe that 9/11 was because of Saddam. That's why I posted my query about Bush running "unopposed." I do not understand why the Dems are continuing to hit Bush in such irrelevant (to voters) areas as his Air Force Reserve record, instead of attacking the misinformation the admin continues to assert as truth. How much money the Dems spend on ads from now until the election isn't the point, if the message in those ads isn't about issues that voters care about. Iraq is one issue that's working for Bush, when the truth of the war could pull him down, if only Kerry's team put some real energy into it. So I wonder, again, what's keeping Kerry from shoving the 9/11 commission's report into Bush's face? A certain percentage of American voters will always vote for the incumbent, particularly if extra framing makes it seem/feel that voting against the incumbent is tantamount to voting against the president (the office). The Dems need to make this basic distinction as clear as Cheney, in the opposite direction. You and I may take this for granted, but in the heavily Hispanic and Hmong town where I live, it's unthinkably unpatriotic to assert that the highest US politician of this democratic country is not necessarily telling the truth. We're talking about a lot of voters--relatively new ones, and their kids--for whom the US government *is* the president. Hey, but even old, Nation-reading folks like me are not impressed by the way Kerry's getting bashed, even on such liberalish media as NPR. Non-committed Dems might be wondering, then, whether Kerry is capable of talking the rest of the world into collaborating with the US on diplomatic solutions to armed conflict. Kerry's style of campaigning, so far, indicates that he gives the farm away to the guy with a bullhorn, and then runs off sniffling and crying foul. You've gotta really loathe Bush to vote for Kerry as this Dem is portraying himself in this campaign's action and rhetoric! Really, "tax-and-spend democrats"--with THIS DEFICIT? Yet the Republicans got away with it! Carol, at 105 degrees and warming ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html