Anyone heard anything good about Kerry's positions on anything lately?

Really, Gabbneb. You don't need to reduce things to this sort of condescension. It's this kind of thinking that got Democrats blown out of Congress.

The fact that Bush's poll numbers on the economy are so low explains things much better. The Democratic scare tactics on the economy have been devastating for Bush.

since when are you concerned about Democrats being ineffective?

Statements like "This election isn't about policy, especially when half the electorate disagrees with you about it." make me want to start drinking and wake up sometime in 2008.

Indirectly, Gabbneb is saying that people vote for Bush do not recognize him as incompetent or insane. It's a condescending manner that reinforces negative stereotypes about liberals.

or, you aren't going to convince a swing voter to vote for you because you think America shouldn't take an active role in the world, but you are going to convince them because you can do so at lesser cost than your rival

So it'd make sense to make sure the swing voters know this is your position, right?

more concern for Kerry's effectiveness from Republicans!

Statements like "This election isn't about policy, especially when half the electorate disagrees with you about it." make me want to start drinking and wake up sometime in 2008.

show us the voters, we'll show you the policy.

(and milo, i'm referring to rhetoric more than substance)

I don't think that Gabbneb's linked article is going to be quite applicable, especially considering that so many Americans who are going to vote have already decided, in comparison to previous elections. One suspects they are less likely votes to play for than in 1980 for example... though if Kerry runs particularly well towards election day, he could gain support for usual 'stay-at-homes' (50% of the electorate indeed in '96 and '00 pretty much...). Very few will be happy with Bush's record, except for deluded, diehard Right-wingers, Religious Rightists etc. Natural GOP supporters will probably turn out for Bush, as they see Kerry as 'liberal', but mainstream, neutral opinion... well, I cannot see it getting behind the President, who will not have any credible *positive* message to give, or record to run on.

The article is right in saying Kerry's doing very well to be where he is at the moment. It's wrong in suggesting he could achieve such a swing that Reagan did in 1980 or Clinton in 1992, from their May polling positions. I don't see Kerry being as effective a campaigner to do that; but the article highlights how often the trend has been towards the challenger in the later months: even a far smaller swing towards Kerry from the current position would make it a comfortable electoral win.

he's playing for the same Florida (primarily, but not exclusively) votes that Bush's policy is designed for and that Lieberman was picked by Gore for. I'm not sure that statement is inconsistent with Clinton's Israel policy or an objection to settlements.

Kerry has to go around engaging with actual voters not central media opinion so much, at this stage..

otm. and that's exactly what he's doing. Bush too, to some extent.

I don't think that Gabbneb's linked article is going to be quite applicable, especially considering that so many Americans who are going to vote have already decided, in comparison to previous elections.

the large number of Americans who have decided mostly live outside the battleground states, where 30%, rather than the national 10%, are undecided.

Bush trails 52-43 in the West, and 52-42 in the *key* midwest region. Looks like the Democrats would do well to try and take Colorado and Arizona; both are clearly in play by the sign of these statistics..

Bush may well have trailed by the same amount in 2000 - California presumably skews the whole thing. But yes, Kerry will follow something of a Western strategy, and both of those states are in play (though I'd give both to Bush at the moment and probably in November).

May 14, 2004
POLITICAL MEMO
Biggest Divide? Maybe It's Health Care
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, May 13- Senator John Kerry has spent this week campaigning relentlessly on the problems in the nation's health care system and maintaining that President Bush has failed to address them. The Bush campaign has countered furiously, saying Mr. Kerry's proposals are far too expensive and would inevitably lead to government micromanagement of private health care.

This is not just another exercise in partisan maneuvering. Nowhere are the policy differences between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush more apparent, health analysts say, than on what to do about rising health costs and the growing number of Americans without insurance.

Few dispute the extent of the problem. After several years of stability in the mid-1990's, the cost of coverage is soaring again. Premiums were up an average of 13.9 percent last year, the third consecutive year of double-digit increases. More and more small businesses say they are staggering under the strain.

The number of Americans without insurance, meanwhile, has jumped to 43.6 million, according to a census report last fall, and more than a fifth are children.

Mr. Kerry argued this week that those problems had worsened on Mr. Bush's watch.

"George Bush has had four years to offer America a real health care plan, and he hasn't," the senator declared Wednesday in Orlando, Fla.

Republicans say that they are, in fact, responding: Senate Republicans stepped forward Tuesday to endorse a package of tax measures - including Mr. Bush's main proposal - aimed at the uninsured.

But the Bush and Kerry plans differ substantially in cost, the number of uninsured they hope to cover, the methods they would use and the underlying philosophy. Health care analysts say the difference in scale alone is striking.

One expert on health, Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, said, "The president's proposals remain very modest, while Senator Kerry is willing to make health a major priority of his administration."

Mr. Bush's main proposal for the uninsured would cost $70 billion over 10 years. It would give a new tax credit to low- and moderate-income families to help them buy health insurance. The proposal, first unveiled in the 2000 campaign but never enacted, would provide up to $1,000 for individuals and $3,000 for families. The administration estimates it would benefit 4.5 million Americans when put fully into effect.

Mr. Bush presents the plan as a part of his philosophy of giving individuals more choices and more control over their health care, and of trusting the private market to respond to their needs.

"I've made my stand,'' the president said in March. ''I believe that the best health care policy is one that trusts and empowers consumers and one that understands the market."

Similarly, Mr. Bush proposes to hold down health costs through the approach sometimes described as consumer-driven health care. The idea is to make consumers more conscious of the cost of medical care, encouraging them to shop around for better deals and eventually reducing unnecessary care.

As the president envisions it, consumers would combine high-deductible insurance plans, which are relatively inexpensive, with tax-free health savings accounts that they would create to cover the cost of routine medical care. This year he has proposed making the premiums for those plans deductible, to further encourage their use.

Critics fault the president's plan on several grounds. They say that his $3,000 tax credit falls far short of what it takes to buy a substantial family plan, and that he relies too much on the market of individual health insurance rather than buttressing the employer-based system of group coverage, considered far more stable. In the end, the critics assert, Mr. Bush's proposals would leave tens of millions of Americans uninsured, and many millions more squeezed by the soaring costs of an unfettered market.

Mr. Kerry, for his part, has a sweeping plan that tries to cover all uninsured children and most uninsured adults without the kind of fundamental structural change that doomed past Democratic proposals. It would cost $650 billion over 10 years, his campaign estimates, and would be financed by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $200,000 a year.

The most unusual part of Mr. Kerry's plan would have the federal government pick up 75 percent of the cost of the most expensive medical cases - those of over $50,000 a year - if employers guaranteed that they would pass the savings along to their workers through reduction of premiums. This is intended to ease the burden on businesses, especially small ones, and provide cost relief to Americans with insurance.

In general, Mr. Kerry would provide a variety of new subsidies to help small businesses and low-income people buy health insurance: $177 billion over 10 years in tax credits, more than twice the size of Mr. Bush's credits.

The senator would also create a new version of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan, a collection of private plans now available to Congress and federal workers, that would provide good group coverage to other Americans and small businesses.

And he would expand assistance to the states to cover more children and low-income adults under Medicaid.

Mr. Kerry argued this week that his plan would succeed because it was not a "government plan" with new mandates and bureaucracies. Republicans say it would nonetheless lead to new government regulation and essentially transfer to the federal government the responsibility for a huge share of health care spending.

One expert on health, Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, said, "The president's proposals remain very modest, while Senator Kerry is willing to make health a major priority of his administration."

I get what the Urban Institute guy's saying, and I agree Bush's proposals for the uninsured are paltry. But it bugs me that the disagreement tends to get treated (by, say, the Times) as an ideological one, with the Republican "small government" vs. the Democratic "big govt. program," when neither proposal comes close to the cost of the Medicare drug company handout. Republicans can support the most insanely expensive wastes of taxpayer money and still be portrayed as the party of "small government" and "modest" programs. I mean, Iraq's costing $5 billion a month, and the president's proposing $70 billion over 10 years for uninsured Americans?

.

(Oh, that zany Al Gore.)

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so if Democrats do it in the future, you won't object?

Yes, I'm a real outlier on this one. It's not like one of the leading right-wing newspapers in America is publishing an opinion piece calling Rumsfeld a treasonous fanatic unfit to serve who has lost focus on reality.

Questioning America = patriotic
Questioning the left = Republican

Also, it is potentially a genuinely bi-partisan issue. There are obviously private interests that might oppose it, but I don't think there is any significant portion of the public that is anti- "energy independence" or even against research into alternative energy sources. So this could be a really good thing for Kerry to talk up right now. It at least is unlikely to lose him any votes.

Also, his training wheels line was funny.

*I somehow only recently discovered that I don't need to use periods when I write this.

I think it only looks that way from the left. On the right, you've got plenty of true believers howling for proof of Bush's credentials. The gay rights amendment thing was basically just to shut them up at least until the convention. (He's having a harder time placating the honest fiscal conservatives, who are wondering just what in the hell has happened.)

And Kerry might be cold, but as far as I know he's never openly mocked someone on death row pleading for their life. Where Bush gets his alleged reputation for warm folksiness is beyond me. He's a smug asshole who comes across like a smug asshole.