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In a September 17th column in Salon magazine (hidden behind a subscription firewall) political columnist and author Joe Conason writes that “there is no reason to give up, regardless of any flaws in the Kerry-Edwards campaign or the Bush-Cheney convention bounce.” That ‘bounce’ has fallen flat, according to Conason, returning the presidential race to a virtual dead heat, according to several new polls.
The new Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal poll, completed on September 13th, shows Kerry with 48 percent, Bush with 47 percent and Ralph Nader with 2 percent, an almost identical result to the Harris poll taken before the Republican Convention, when Kerry was ahead by 1 point.
Late last week, the Economist released a new YouGov poll, which employs online technology developed by a British survey firm, and found Bush ahead of Kerry by a single point, 47 to 46. “To the magazine’s editors this represents an ‘impressive’ result for Bush,” writes Conason, “because more than 56 percent of the voters polled by YouGov say they are ‘dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time’.”
Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, completed a new poll of 1,003 voters on September 14th, which also showed Bush one point ahead, 49 to 48 percent. Greenberg’s poll includes lots of data suggesting that voters want a new direction — and that independents, in particular, are deeply dissatisfied with Bush.
The latest survey by Investor’s Business Daily and the Christian Science Monitor, completed September 12th, actually shows Kerry ahead by two points among registered voters and tied with Bush among ‘likely’ voters. Conason suggests that “for a useful discussion of this distinction and why it may not be meaningful at this stage” that readers consult Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising blog, “which provides smart, professional and duly skeptical analysis of media polls.”
Too often, the left tends to adopt a defeatist ‘sky is falling’ attitude at the first hint of trouble allegedly impacting on the viability of the more progressive party, or candidate, running in a federal, provincial / state, or municipal election, seeming to give up the cause and awarding the win in the early going to the corporatist, right-wing candidate or party.
With 48 days to go, though, before Presidential election day in the United States, to believe that the ‘game is over’ and that Bush is all but a shoo-in for a second term in office would be, at best, wrong-headed and just plain asinine. As one-time New York Yankees coach Yogi Berra put it so cogently oh so many years ago, “It ain’t over ’til its over.”
