3:54 pm | New York City

'The Battle of Coral Gables' Edition

A federal judge struck down an important surveillance provision of the antiterrorism legislation known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ruling that it broadly violated the Constitution by giving the federal authorities unchecked powers to obtain private information.

-- from today's New York Times

We pride ourselves on our fierce iconoclasm, here at the BWA Campaign Blog, but we admit that we are just as hepped-up as the rest of the respectable media over the Rumble in the Swampland tonight in Florida. Oh wait, that's wrong. We are actually near-fatally UN-excited by this massive exercise in voter misinformation. The candidates, as you know, are not allowed to directly address each other, nor are they allowed to refer to having additional debates during the course of this debate, and there will be exactly 30 seconds for "extended discussion". However, if you have missed the opposing sets of talking points masquerading as campaign speeches, you may be pleasantly surprised.

We do admit, however, that there is a faint off-chance that someone will say something off-the-cuff, revealing or wise. Or, possibly, Jim Lehrer will get a few good licks in. We would give ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY if Lehrer (of any of the rest of them) would act like journalists for a change, instead of TV critics, and actually follow up with these men, actually challenge the president's bizarre and otherworldly assertions about the world. Fortunately we are quite poor.

John Stewart was on NPR this morning, and discussed this very issue (the political media consistently granting credibility to gibberish), with great lucidity and passion. We will have to hunt down a transcript. We do recall him referring to Bob Novak as a "douchebag", and saying that he "ought to be in jail," which we enjoyed.

Something else we enjoyed this morning was Peter Beinart's essay on why Howard Dean would have been the better Democratic candidate after all:

Were Dean the nominee, the Bush campaign would probably be going after him not as a flip-flopper but as a lefty. Lefty isn't exactly a term of endearment. But at least it evokes issues rather than character. Character debates sank Al Gore and threaten to sink John Kerry now. A debate about issues, on the other hand — especially the biggest issue of all, Iraq — is something Democrats could win.

We are glad that the conventional wisdom is catching up to the BWA Campaign Blog, albeit 6 months too late.

12:14 pm | New York City

There's actually a poll out today that has Kerry up by 2 points (Investor's Business Daily), but we supposed we can't trumpet so minor a thing if we are to maintain any sort of consistency in our stance that the national tracking polls are all but meaningless. On this topic, Electoral Vote Predictor administered an across-the-board beating to the pollsters yesterday:

Some bad news for the polling business. Strategic Vision (R) has a new poll in Ohio showing Bush ahead 52% to 43% there. However, there is also a Lake Snell Perry (D) poll showing the race there to be an exact tie, with both candidates at 46%. It is becoming increasingly clear that the pollsters are producing the results that the people paying the bills want to hear. Even pollsters who were once thought to be above suspicion are now suspicious. Gallup, for example, is now normalizing its samples to include 40% Republicans, even though the 2000 exit polls showed the partisan distribution to be 39% Democratic, 35% Republican. There is scant evidence that the underlying partisan distribution has changed much since then. Other pollsters also normalize their data, but most don't say how. Normalizing the sample to ensure the proper number of women, elderly voters, etc. is legitimate provided that the pollster publicly states what has been done.

Our hats off to anyone who waded through that dense and jargon-laden block of text. Our narrowed eyes to anyone who did not, along with an admonishing finger. Now get back there and read it again.

Expectations are high for tomorrow's 'Rumble in Florida'. The respectable media are beside themselves with excitement. The best pre-debate commentary we have found came from Paul Krugman:

During the debate, Mr. Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger, and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove's game by, as [Adam] Clymer puts it, confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates' facts?

We could not agree more, although we fully expect to see any substantive coverage of what the candidate's said and what their publicly-declared policies would entail relegated to page A17. An equally acerbic view of the upcoming debate appears in today's New York Time, courtesy of defeated Democratic standard-bearer Al Gore:

My advice to John Kerry is simple: be prepared for the toughest debates of your career. While George Bush's campaign has made "lowering expectations" into a high art form, the record is clear - he's a skilled debater who uses the format to his advantage. There is no reason to expect any less this time around.

And if anyone truly has "low expectations" for an incumbent president, that in itself is an issue.

Poor old Al. He tried so hard, yet irked so many. Hopefully he'll go down in history as an Adlai Stevenson-esque righteous and beloved loser.

11:34 am | New York City

"How many people had I already killed? There was those six that I know about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?"

Nothing new for you this week from the BWA Campaign Blog, aside from the usual dark ugliness and weirdly-skewed numbers. We should point out that however meaningless national polls are (very) and however wildly they diverge from respectable polling organization to respectable polling organization (very), every major poll has the president up by at least 5 points, a small but significant difference if you believe in that sort of thing.

We are a professional, and we pretend not to care, but deep inside we feel the oily rope of fear coiling in our guts. Kerry may be a closer, like Seabiscuit, but Karl Rove is a last-minute eye-gouger and finger-eater, like Gollum, only less warm-hearted.

As Joshua Green observed in Atlantic Monthly:

"It will come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the current campaign that Rove's most notable tendency in close races has been to go negative against his opponent, early and often... Though it is forever fashionable to denounce negative campaigning, every political expert understands that it can be extremely effective. Rove's career has borne this out perhaps better than any other modern political consultant's."

"Rove's reputation for winning is eclipsed only by his reputation for ruthlessness, and examples abound of his apparent willingness to cross moral and ethical lines."

Well, we knew that already.

Very few items of interest have crossed the wires in the last few days, as the respectable media revs their excitement level into code-red dangerous overdrive over the upcoming Battle In Coral Gables. We have a debate party already scheduled, featuring strong drink. It may be needed. Our boss will probably want us to work late, so if you talk to him on Thursday, say you saw us, and we looked ill and pale, as if we were running 5 to 10 points down in every major poll 36 days out from an election.

The only item we can recommend today to the discriminating reader is this Jim Hoagland piece on Kerry and Bush's differing geopolitical views:

This is far more than an argument over tactics, as this election's Third Man -- Ralph Nader -- claims. The incumbent president is the radical in this unorthodox election year. In his view, a new threat to U.S. security, in a new geographic region and from a new kind of enemy, demands a paradigm shift in international behavior that can be unilaterally enforced by U.S. power if necessary.

Bush believes that America's friends and foes abroad can -- and must -- be made to change their ways to make the world safer for democracies and particularly for the United States. Only by making the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Libya understand that their very survival is at stake can effective cooperation be gained in the war on al Qaeda and other parts of the loosely connected and fanatical Islamist network.

Hoagland is one of the best analysts of foreign affairs and international news currently writing for the general audience, and we love him. He will probably lose his column soon, we imagine, since it requires something other than hind-brain activity and a numbed, half-alert interest in gibberish and irrelevant crap to appreciate.

Speaking of which, Ana Marie Cox, the famed and beloved Wonkette, appeared on the cover of this Sunday's NYT Magazine, illustrating their feature story on political bloggers. Being a political blogger of great repute and unimpeachable taste, we were not impressed with the article, although, as always, Wonkette looked foxy. Perhaps she will develop a soft spot for less-prolific bloggers with a certain air of doomed majesty and a light-blue color scheme.

1:43 pm | New York City

We woke up this morning to the metallic taste of fear in the wind. What could it be? Ah, yes, the hate-merchants over at the Republican National Committee. From the New York Times:

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.

The mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned" and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

This will be Arkansas if you don't vote! They will destroy your home, defile your women! They hate your way of life! Hate them back, fast, before they get wise! We suppose we should be thankful they aren't mailing out vials of Mexican eye-poison and suggesting that all God-fearing Christians throw it at their Democratic representative, should they have one.

Note to James Carville: Suggest that your candidate back off his "I will ban the Bible" statements. For some reason it's playing badly in the south.

We can't even post the numbers today. They are too stupid. Well, here's one, but we've given up on anything but electoral vote counts. Everything else just muddies the water:

General Election (Hotline Scoreboard)
Bush: 31 states (268 electoral votes)
Kerry: 14 states (202 electoral votes)

CNN political pontificator Mark Shields (to whom we used to have to deliver a copy of the Hotline every single day, printed out on a decrepit dot-matrix printer), listed all the things we should NOT pay attention to when predicting elections:

• Campaign personnel hiring and in-fighting
• Candidate endorsements
• Vice presidential candidates and the families

Instead, Shields said, we should all watch the debates. Point taken. One week and counting.

3:11 pm | New York City

"A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

-- Richard Perle, one of the architects of the Iraq War, addressing an AEI luncheon one year ago today.

The president addressed the United Nations yesterday, explaining that the Iraq War was a total, unequivocal success, and has resulted in Iraq becoming a vibrant, tolerant, Western-style democracy, ready to join the community of nations. We were pleased to hear this news, here at the BWA Campaign Blog, as we had feared that Iraq had become a brutal power vaccum, where 1,037 U.S. soldiers and God-only-know-how-many-tens-of-thousands of Iraqi citizens have been killed, and shows no signs of doing anything other than spiraling downward into colossal, west-African-style dysfunction, murder and infamy.

Despite our flippant, spiteful tone, we are pleased that both Bush and Kerry have been talking about Iraq in recent days, instead of Vietnam. We could not care less about the authenticity of the notorious CBS documents purporting to show that Bush shirked his National Guard duty 30 years ago. We could not care less if they were printed on 'Hello Kitty' stationery. Politically, the issue is irrelevant, and we can only hope that the people running the Democratic campaign are cognizant of this fact.

To our mind (our wise, thoughtful mind), it's a "horse sense of the great unwashed masses" issue. It's the same thing that saved Bill Clinton from impeachment, stoning and dismemberment at the hands of angry House Republicans. "He has sex with ladies!" they cried, their Brooks Brothers suits wrinkled and stained from sleepless, wrathful days. But the electorate was well aware that Clinton was an adulterous pooter-hound. They had learned this 7 years earlier, and decided it didn't matter all that much. The same holds true here. Again, the voting public is well aware that, as a young man, Bush used his family connections to get out of miltary service, and was an indifferent Guardsmen at best. Again, no one cares. Stop wasting our time.

Well, enough smirking gibberish out of us. The Washington Post Campaign Report (along with half the other respectable media) has picked up on the trend of the two candidates to discuss the failed and ill-advised war at hand, rather than the failed and ill-advised war from 1962:

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John F. Kerry must have come to the realization last week that -- despite his best efforts to highlight issues such as health care and the economy -- voters see the 2004 presidential election as a referendum on the war in Iraq. Trailing in recent national and key state polls, Kerry apparently felt an urgent need to go on the offensive. So, with the help of new, big-name advisers -- former Clinton aides Joe Lockhart and Mike McCurry -- Kerry has sharpened the tip of his campaign spear, recasting his attack on President Bush's handling of the Iraq war and reconstruction in an attempt to put Bush on the defensive.

Moving along to the eternal, hateful struggle of trying to make sense of the numbers, we must confess to a great weariness. The tracking polls emerging from various groups swing wildly hither and yon, without even the merest nod to consistency. We have taken to watching the electoral vote counters instead, which we assume are more reliable indicators of the eventual fallout.

Electoral Votes (American Research Group)
Kerry: 270
Bush: 253

Electoral Votes (Electoral Vote Predictor)
Kerry: 269
Bush: 253

Electoral Votes ( Intrade State Futures)
Bush: 284
Kerry: 222

Electoral Votes (Zogby)
Kerry: 264
Bush: 241

Of course, we may be paying more attention to these only because they seem to show Kerry coming out on top. As you know, 270 electoral votes is the magic number that gets you the White House and the matching luggage set.

And, rounding out today's "eye on events", the BBC reports that former folk singer Cat Stevens, notable both for his wistful, delicately-haunting melodies and his endorsement of the death of author Salman Rushdie at the hands of thuggish Islamic fanatics, was detained and deported by U.S. authorities:

A security alert involving the singer who used to be known as Cat Stevens has forced a London-to-Washington flight to be diverted to another US airport. The plane was already in the air when US officials identified that the singer, whose name is now Yusuf Islam, was on one of their "watch lists".

We wonder if the BWA Campaign Blog is on any watch lists. It would be nice to think so, but probably not.

3:39 pm | New York City

We have returned, alert readers, bearing grim tidings and darksome news, a herald of woe whose tread sounds upon the stoop like the footfall of doom.

Actually, we are not so downcast as all that, but we cannot continue to feign optimism in the face of all this bad news. Also, things have become, at least for the moment, a numbers game, and we are beyond such things. Also, if we were able to see clear through the shifting murk of the tracking polls and identify the ones that reflected reality, we would not be slaving away at an underpaid, thankless day job, updating this blog with a bitter taste in our mouth. Or, perhaps, we might, but we would have a killer edge on some side bets. The New York Times comforted the frightened today:

"One of the things that is pretty clear from all of the polls, that seems to be very consistent, is that Bush had a very good convention, that his support has increased and that he is probably leading Kerry,'' said Michael Traugott, a University of Michigan professor and author on the subject of polls.

But the voter sentiment shifts reflected in the surveys also indicate that the contest is far from over.

"My sense is that Bush is ahead by several percentage points, that the public is pretty volatile, that the National Guard issue could play either way for one of the candidates,'' Mr. Moore said. "It is clearly not decided what the outcome will be.''

A reading on the state of polling more to our liking appeared in Jimmy Breslin's Newsday column. Breslin blames the shaky numbers on cell phone users, or, rather, the failure of pollsters to include them. Being of a demographic cohort unlikely to even have a land-line, we tend to sympathize. We also enjoy a good two-fisted hammer-beating:

Anybody who believes these national political polls are giving you facts is a gullible fool. Any editors of newspapers or television news shows who use poll results as a story are beyond gullible. On behalf of the public they profess to serve, they are indolent salesmen of falsehoods.

Despite our contempt for the recent numbers, we will go ahead and post them. But we are not happy about it.

General Election (Hotline Scoreboard)
Kerry: 15 states (203 electoral votes)
Bush: 32 states (294 electoral votes)

Well, all is not lost, weak-livered leftists. We will strive to leave the numbers alone until after the first debate, scheduled for a scant 10 days from now. The administration has agreed to three debates, rather than the two it was pushing for. In addition, Cheney and Edwards will go mano-a-mano on October 5th. We must admit that's what we're really looking forward to. It certainly won't move the numbers anywhere, but it should rate fairly high for entertainment value. Assuming Edwards is still alive, that is. The man has the campaign schedule of someone in the federal witness protection program.

1:22 pm | New York City

The vice-president, fresh from his recent stint overseeing the construction of a newer, more-powerful Death Star to defeat the Rebel Forces, ran out a little damage control yesterday, CLEARLY responding to the pressure brough to bear by the BWA Campaign Blog:

Vice President Dick Cheney sought to "clean up" a controversy over comments he made this week, saying that the country must brace for a potential terrorist attack no matter who is elected president. Electing Democrat John Kerry does not mean the United States will be hit again, he said in a newspaper interview published Friday.

That must gall him. We assume he will have us bitten in the stomach by Rottweilers after the election.

Across the aisle, so to speak, Ralph Nader continues his valiant effort to bring about the ruin of everything he has claimd to hold dear for the last 30 years. Ron Gunzberger reported the following today:

Independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader is apparently so annoyed with the Democratic Party's organized legal efforts nationwide to keep him off state ballots that he plans to get even by increasing his political efforts in the key battleground states. On Friday, Nader announced he will formally kick-off his general election campaign this coming week with stops in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. At a campaign breakfast Friday, Nader spent nearly the entire hour criticizing the Democrats for their ballot access challenges to his candidacy -- actions that he described as "harassment."

Perhaps Nader and Zell Miller could get together and go on 'Hardball' and talk about how they really showed Howard Dean a thing or two.

And, speaking of swing states, some numbers from two of "The Big Three":

Pennsylvania (SurveyUSA tracking poll)
Kerry: 49
Bush: 47

Ohio (Columbus Dispatch poll)
Kerry: 46
Bush: 46

And, rounding out today's offering, Virginia's John Warner continues his streak as the BWA Campaign Blog's Favorite Republican for his stand-up performance against the ongoing attempts by the Defense Department to ignore the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Jackdon Diehl gave out some props in today's Washington Post:

There is Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who so far has stuck to his promise to pursue the abuse allegations wherever they lead. In a little-noticed power play on Thursday, Warner politely but firmly rejected the conclusion of Army investigators that neither the former Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, nor anyone on his staff deserved prosecution or any other formal sanction. Citing the investigative record -- which shows that Sanchez signed orders allowing dogs to be used to terrify prisoners, and that two generals and a colonel who reported to him were either complicit in those acts or failed to report ongoing abuses at Abu Ghraib prison -- Warner ordered the generals to review the cases again to determine if the criminal charge of dereliction of duty applied, and to report back to him.

We weren't able to get up much brimstone today. The sight of Cheney sort-of-apologizing took the self-righteous wind right out of our sails. Don't worry. It won't last.

6:02 pm | New York City

We are relieved, as the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks is upon us, to learn from no less authoritative a source than the vice-president himself, that voting for Kerry is just asking the terrorists to hit us again. From the New York Times:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice," Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, "because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

We applauds the Mr. Cheney's willingness to tell it like it is. Perhaps he could speak with the terrorists and find out if they have some sort of sliding scale. For instance, if Kerry wins, of course, we will be attacked. But what if he only loses by a little? Will they attack a smaller city? Portland maybe? And if he is defeated soundly, will they leave us alone, or will they just attack a little town, like Catlett, Virginia? These are important questions that only the vice-president can answer.

Lots of bad mojo moving on the wires today. The Kerry campaign seems to have decided to fight divisiveness and fear-mongering with dizzily-escalating rhetoric. We could barely keep up.

What has our wise brow truly furrowed, however, here at the BWA Campaign Blog, is the numbers.

Economist poll
Registered Voters
Bush: 46
Kerry: 45

CBS News poll
Registered Voters
Bush: 49
Kerry: 42

Washington Post poll
Registered Voters
Bush: 52
Kerry: 44

FOX News poll
Registered Voters
Bush: 47
Kerry: 45

However, moving calmly upon the face of the waters is master pollster John Zogby, who explained why the major polls are gyrating so wildly:

Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters.

If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place.

That's some dense text up in there. However, we urge our alert readers to follow the link above for a more detailed explanation of the vagaries of modern polling.

And, rounding out today's post, the BWA Campaign Blog 'Zinger of the Week' goes to cartoon-like beloved elder statesman Jimmy Carter, who sent a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in which he called Georgia Democrat Zell Miller "rabid", and went on to pummel the rage-maddened Republican lickspittle about the head and shoulders in a vigorous and rousing fashion:

"There are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral pre-emptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth and the political technique of character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause," Carter wrote.

We are forced to agree with former president Carter on this issue, and urge that, for the good of the nation, Mr. Miller be put down as quickly and humanely as possible.

2:46 pm | New York City

Forgive us for our dramatic air yesterday, alert readers. We were drunk on moral outrage and Mexican whiskey. We will return to our steely-eyed objectivity today by talking about the numbers. Sweet, reassuring numbers...

Two major polls taken during the GOP convention show a significant jump for the president (giving lie to analysts who explained Kerry's lack of a post-convention bounce by blaming it on a heavily-polarized electorate with no wiggle room). Stuart Rothenberg eats some crow on behalf of the commentariat in today's Rothenberg Report:

How stupid do we look now? And what do we say after very preliminary polling suggests a significant Bush bounce?

Either the surveys are wrong (and they could be) or Kerry’s no-bounce convention stemmed more from the Democratic nominee’s own limited appeal -- even with a well managed Democratic convention – than from the electorate’s polarization.

Yes, I’m wary of the Time and Newsweek polls, especially considering the bizarre timing of their telephone surveys. Time conducted its poll during the four days of the GOP convention – what the heck were they thinking when they scheduled that survey? – while half of Newsweek’s poll was conducted Thursday, the last day of the convention.

It makes much more sense to wait until after the convention is over before testing sentiment.

Still, the combination of those polls with other movement toward Bush during the previous two weeks and the new aggressiveness from Sen. John Kerry suggest that the Presidential race has turned toward President George W. Bush’s favor.

In case you missed it, here they are:

General Election (CNN / USA Today poll)
Registered Voters
Bush: 49
Kerry: 48

General Election (CNN / USA Today poll)
Likely Voters
Bush: 52
Kerry: 45

We are only mildly worried over these numbers, given the timing of the poll. If this disparity persists to the end of the week, then we will start to fret. In the meantime, all those tax-fattened whiners over at the DNC need to quit frontin'.

9:47 pm | Brooklyn

'Labor Day' Edition

dear mr. will attack
i know that you have been vacationing
but our country needs you now more than ever
since you stopped daily political updates
george bush has risen slightly in the polls
zell miller went nutzoid
and karl rove's magic hurricane machine
has ravaged our nation's precious alligator farms
it is your duty as an american journalist
to blog about these issues
if you write them i will read them
this i pledge with my swear
your brother in arms
james

We have returned, alert readers, from weeks spent in white-columned Washington and hurricane-fearful Kitty Hawk, and our backs are bent low with the weight of the bad news brewing all around us. We are fear-gutted, trustless and estranged, and for good or ill, the long summer is ended.

Bubba's heart weakened and failed him last week, like Stephanopoulos, and, though we are ardent secularists, here at the BWA Campaign Blog, we had our fingers crossed for the old hound dog. We suspect it was the low-grade wave of hate and fear and dark muttering rolling out of the Republican convention last week in New York that flatlined his ticker, and not the endless armfuls of Big Macs, but we are not certain.

We spent the convention week in the Outer Banks, thankfully, as the route to our office, located blocks from Madison Square Garden, was rumored to be impassable. We watched the news coverage in the company of our father, who also dislikes the president in a specific and visceral way. Although we were largely unmoved one way or the other by Mr. Bush's speech, we are still recovering from the black and senseless rage that fell upon us during the McCarthy-like rant of Zell Miller, whose vile-tongued cauldron of hate stands as the worst example of treachery against the American dream since John Ashcroft put clothes on the naked statue of Justice before a press conference. Harold Meyerson shared our thoughts in the Washington Post:

Miller's rant, delivered with the monomaniacal intensity of an ancient prelate condemning heretics to the stake, was a huge hit inside Madison Square Garden; the hall so shook with his maledictions that Dick Cheney's more low-key falsifications of Kerry's record seemed mere footnotes to the text. Miller's crazed sermon was in every way the apotheosis of the real Bush campaign, surpassing in its malice and mendacity even the Swift boat ads.

In his Thursday night acceptance speech, President Bush paid tribute to Ronald Reagan, noting that "his spirit of optimism and goodwill and decency are in this hall." That may rank as the most Orwellian line of the entire convention; whatever it was that was inside the hall, where delegates gleefully affixed Band-Aids to mock Kerry's war wounds, would be hard to construe as decency, much less goodwill.

We had hoped more members of the respectable media would have noted the glaring and obvious contrast between the keynote speaker selected by the Democrats at their convention in Boston and the one selected by the Republicans. Barack Obama, with his sunny, inclusive call to arms for all Americans, regardless of race, class and political affiliation to join together, and Zell Miller, his face twisted with ugliness and anger, listing weapons systems and expressing his boundless contempt for journalists, poets and "agitators" who protest government failing and falsity. We are too young to have witnessed firsthand the "agitation" of Martin Luther King, Jr., but we suspect Mr. Miller did not care for it one bit at the time.

What frightens and saddens the editors of this blog most about Mr. Miller's hypocritical and rage-filled tirade is not that it took place, but that the GOP selected it as the face they most wanted to present to the country. Compassionate conservatism seems to have died on the vine.

The Democrats, long-accustomed to laying down under punches, seems to have been jolted into action by the Republican convention, and its attendant poll-bounce for the president. Kerry came out swinging in a recent speech, directly contrasting his service in Vietnam with that of Bush and Cheney. A pointless strategy, since swing-voting 50-year-old men by the truckload also missed a trip to the Mekong Delta one way or another, and pointing that out with great abandon can only hurt his numbers.

Fortunately, a band of ex-Clinton loyalists have signed on to the Kerry campaign, including the wise and doughy Joe Lockhart, the elf-like talking head Paul Begala, and the Ragin' Cajun himself, James Carville. Democratic partisans should be heartened by this news, since this is the group, in part, that got Clinton elected twice to the presidency, despite the fact that he was a philandering, adulterous, draft-dodging scoundrel.

We have long prided ourself on our air of remove, here at the BWA Campaign Blog, but we have lost all heart for fence-sitting in the wake of that speech in New York. Dark forces are at work, and the nation we love is threatened more and more by blackguards and tyrants. We will do our best to rally the troops in the heartland, but we feel the shadow coming down. It will be a treacherous September.