Pandagon

Rural Voters

Kerry and Bush are closer than expected among rural voters, with the latter ahead by a mere 9 points. Rural America is one of those groups who, if we can simply hold down Bush's margin, will make the election almost impossible for him and highly possible for us. Keep in mind that this poll is the first of its kind and I'm a little suspicious of the methodology, but it's worth looking at.

Bush 42?

Most anyone who reads polls has said at one point or another that the horse race numbers still don't mean anything. And they really don't - yet. I'm still more than a bit mystified that Nader polls so highly despite having virtually no real profile as his own candidate in this race, and actually being less personally popular than he was in 2000, particularly among Democrats. There's also the problem that all of the results are ping-ponging around in a fairly narrow range, making it hard to track between polls or even poll to poll any real trends.

Bush's approval rating is dropping like a rock and that, I think, is the best possible news for a Kerry presidency. People are barely listening to the appeals that either candidate is making right now, particularly in televised ads. The biggest issue is positioning once the real campaign begins in September - the lower Bush's approval ratings, the harder it's going to be for him to get voters to listen to him defend himself on issues that they already disapprove of him on.

Bush is also going to have the problem that a second Bush term, from what he's proposed thus far, is going to be a grab bag of random proposals that regular people are going to look at with a mixture of shock and...perverse curiousity, actually, and what amounts to fixing his first term. Think about his domestic program. Fix No Child Left Behind. Tinker with the tax cuts. Fix the prescription drug benefit. The list goes on - unlike a typical strong incumbent/challenger dynamic, both Kerry and Bush are proposing solutions to the problems of Bush's first term, which does, I think, tend to play into Kerry's hands, particularly since he's proposing larger and more definitive changes than Bush for the most part.

In the end - the guy's got a 42% approval rating. That's getting into Carter/Bush I territory, if it's not already there.

Kwestion For Kudlow

Larry Kudlow makes this statement in his latest column:

Apparently Mr. Kudlow cannot:

1. Read
2. Do basic math
3. Be honest

Why do I say this? Assuming we're talking about the polls that ABC and the Washington Post did together, Kudlow got his numbers wrong (there were 1,015 registered voters in the poll, and the discrepancy is 15.5%, not 20%), and the reason he got the (wrong) number is because he looked at the election matchup poll, which featured solely registered voters - and featured lower numbers of support than the all adults poll. When you restrict the numbers to only registered voters, Kerry's support improved.

So, Kudlow seems to have read every part of this poll incorrectly. And then, he commits the increasingly cardinal sin of Republican pundits - quoting the Iowa Electronic Markets, a voluntary, opt-in online market that failed to predict 2000 correctly.

Does it strike anyone else that it might pervert the market if Republicans keep linking to it and telling other Republicans that Bush is winning and that you, too can invest in Bush and keep his stock high?

Kudlow goes on to advocate a Bill Bennett-like gambling spree, basically slapping down your money on Bush everywhere possible in order to push his price in markets ever higher. Why is a supposedly professional economist participating in a market-shifting action that will have only the obvious result of artificially inflating George W. Bush's chances, particularly when any poll result that you disagree with because you're incapable of reading it is simply ignored?

Worth Thinking About

Bush's approval rating of 47% is only 2% lower than Ford's was at this stage in the game, well within the margin of error. In the last 50 years, the lowest approval rating of a President who won reelection was Reagan in 84, who had 54% approval. The President's pollsters talk about how Bush is "historic territory", above those who lost badly and below those who won easily. They're wrong -- he's in Ford's territory. Kerry will still have to win this election, but there's little doubt that -- at least for now -- Bush is losing it.

Losing His Religion

Well, not quite his religion so much as his advantage over Kerry on the of terrorism - Bush is finally reaping the rewards of making the one-to-one equation between Iraq and the war on terrorism.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Bush's framing apparatus, or whatever you want to call it, is in serious need of a replacement. In terms of his run of the presidency, Bush has failed to successfully augment any public perception of his policies, and the only thing they stuck to Kerry (flip-flopper) still hasn't sunk him with relation to Bush. Kerry's also up by four to eight points (depending on if Nader's in the race.

I'm continually amazed at how this year is going for the Bush campaign. They pretty much negated the impact of their own ads (the strategy to overwhelm Kerry with negative ads, I think, just flooded people's living rooms with ads way too early, and turned them off to whatever message they contained - plus, it just put Kerry everywhere), and whatever policy apparatus they've decided to use has been either invisible or nonsensical.

If a similar movement is shown across multiple polls, it may be time for Bush's campaign to go into desperation mode. His approval rating's also at 47%.

In fact, other than Iraq (a narrow edge), Kerry leads Bush in every major policy category. Including, to my surprise, taxes. If Bush can't fall back on his major domestic initiatives after being unable to rely on his foreign policy...what, exactly, does he have?

Polls Looking Good

Reading this op-ed by James Mann made me realize that Bush's poll numbers are really quite bad. We get caught up in the horserace aspect of them, but its the general trend that's interesting.

First, take a look at Bush's trend. He peaked around 9/11 and, save for a boost around the beginning of the Iraq War, his numbers have been steadily sliding downward. Conversly, look at Reagan and Clinton, our most recent two-term Presidents. They hit their nadirs around the same time Bush hit his peak, and they continued upward forever after (make sure you're looking at their first term). Where Bush trends downward going into the election, they had been on a long upward swing. Now glance at the other two on the chart. Bush Jr.'s track looks quite similar to Carter's and nearly identical to his Father's. You will, I trust, remember how they ended up. Anyway, that's my positive thinking for the morning:

Teehee

Heh...heh, heh...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(Via Sadly, No.)

Kerry Up?

Kerry's opened up a solid lead on President Bush.

This is the first time since immediately after Super Tuesday that I can remember Kerry having this large of a lead, to the point where in a two-person race he actually has the majority of the votes. I'm really not sure what's bringing him up and Bush down, especially considering that recent events should have at the very least either maintained a margin of error status quo or pushed Bush up a little bit.

It's a hard week to determine how current events are effecting the race for the presidency, considering that Reagan's dominating every other event in the news. I'm going to wait until next week to see if this is the beginning or middle of a trend for Kerry, or simply a poll taken with people moving to Kerry as Bush is removed from the spotlight.

(Oh, and Nader got four points in the three-way race.)

If I Had A Liberal Media...

[Reverse Fox News]

Just three weeks ago, George W. Bush was running neck-and-neck with John Kerry. Today, a new Field Poll shows that even with Nader in the race, Kerry is ahead by 12 points. Why is the Bush campaign losing so much ground in the Golden State? Is it in trouble? How much?

Also, in his latest campaign trip to Ohio, a troubling pattern emerged for Bush. He's traveling to the same places Kerry has after Kerry's been there, and he's adopting the same themes as the Kerry campaign after they've campaigned on them. Has the Bush campaign run out of ideas?

We'll be back with Michael Moore and Al Franken - fair and balanced debate, right after these messages.

[/Reverse Fox News]

Pick Your Cinematic Line Of Defeat

Bush's poll numbers are down to 41% approval in the latest CBS poll.

What I find amazing about all of this is how poorly the White House has played Bush's speeches on Iraq. As far as I can tell, they haven't targeted any particular speech as the "big one", and the media are largely treating it as such - so far, no major network has committed to carrying any of the speeches, and I'm really curious to see whether or not he's actually going to reveal a plan per se, or simply reiterate the need to follow a plan, which he's going to assure us he has.

Bush/Cheney '04: All The Wrong Moves.

Credibility Abounds

After the latest CNN/Time Poll, I'm sure many people are going to be celebrating the horse race numbers, which have Kerry up on Bush 51/46 and Bush's approval/disapproval at 46/49. There's a more important story here, and it's one that's worse for Bush than national reelection numbers or even approval ratings.

On terrorism, the Bush/Kerry spread is 49/42. It's seven points...but when most other polls had the spread around seventeen points, it's a huge deal. In every category, Kerry is running close to or ahead of Bush, on many domestic issues well ahead. Whether through design or the machinations of world events, Bush is losing credibility and Kerry is gaining it - rapidly. Until the conventions are done, these are the numbers to look at if you're interested in seeing Bush out of office. Kerry is not going to lose credibility any time soon on domestic issues - but if Bush keeps losing ground on foreign policy and terrorism (which he has, severely), he's not going to have anything to fall back on.

Bush's strength on anything is a rapidly eroding myth. And when the horse race becomes relevant (i.e., after the conventions) it's numbers like these that are going to make or break Kerry. Nobody's going to care in September that Kerry was running ahead of Bush in May, other than political baseballers. It is going to be relevant, however, to be able to say that people have trusted Kerry more than Bush on certain issues for months (the entire Bush line has been built on aggressively promoting this idea for him, even when it stopped being true).

Kerry's campaign is in a lot better shape than most of us give it credit for.

Just Basic Understanding

Small quibble: either the headline writer or the pollster really needs to sit down with the first few pages of a statistics book and read up on margin of error.

Poll Check

Eh. Kerry's poll numbers don't look that good to me. The revelation that incumbent President's who beat their challengers were doing better at this point in the cycle doesn't mean all that much to me and the fact that Clinton had less support during this period had more to do with Perot taking the anti-Bush voters than anything else. Carter was doing better against Reagan than Bush is against Kerry, as was Ford against Carter. Andrew Kohut's article on poll numbers from earlier today was much more helpful, analyses of how poll trends work are far more relevant at this stage than reminders of historical trends.

I'm not worried about Carter or Clinton or Reagan or Nixon, those elections were made of different people governed by different events and decided by (effectively) different electorates. Arguments predicated on where Reagan was in June miss the point, the election is between Kerry and Bush with the context of a fragile economy, the War on Terror and the war in Iraq. Those are the factors, along with the campaigns of the two (three if you include Nader) candidates, that will decide this election, so let's stop formulating historical equations and trying to plug in current names and years to make ourselves feel better.

Trending Up

The right did its share of crowing after the President survived weaks of attacks and bad news cycles with nary a dip in the polls. But it looks like the past few weeks of attacks on Kerry have managed to pop him high enough in the polls that Rasmussen is now predicting a trend for him. This is the first time either candidate has held a three point lead for three consecutive days since March. neither candidate has done it for four since Kerry locked down the nomination.

And Kerry's huge ad buy hasn't even hit yet. Me likey.

Bush In Trouble?

That's what we'd be hearing if this poll got the play that it should.

There's very little good news for Bush here, and whatever "rally round the flag" momentum he had seems to have worn off entirely. Getting past the horserace stuff, it's the lowest approval rating of his presidency. Again. One would think that someone who, after a $40 million ad blitz, a series of supposedly visionary proposals, and an apparently sputtering opposition campaign kept setting new personal lows in his approval rating would be a more important story than Kerry's ribbons from 33 years ago.

Of course, one would also think that botching the job in Iraq the way it has been would lead to lower than a 46% approval rating, but maybe I'm just being too gosh darned idealistic.

I Know Nuffink

The Corner really, really doesn't want Arlen Specter to win in Pennsylvania - Kathryn Lopez loses her ability to comprehend polls, they publish a series of intellectually lazy articles (most of which, for some reason, pull out the ultimate in Republican endorsements - Toomey could be the Pennsylvanian Reagan).

But there's a couple of things at work here that every article overlooks.

First, does anyone remember the Ben Chandler race? In the weeks before the race, his opponent asked that Bush and Cheney not campaign for her, as their appearances hurt her race. If Specter loses with a prominent endorsement from Bush, this absolutely kills any claim he might have had to coattails in the 2004 election. In two straight highly contested races, Bush's endorsement has, at best, been meaningless.

Second, the idea that Toomey would win because he would draw the conservatives out (thereby helping Bush) while Specter would keep them at home. While it might help in the areas termed "flyover country" in Pennsylvania, if you look at the past two major statewide races in PA (President in 2000, Governor in 2002) pro-choice Democrats beat pro-life Republicans. Rendell and Gore won against far more conservative challengers, both of whom stood to their right on pretty much every major issue. Santorum won his reelection race in 2000, but he was aided by the incompetent run of his Democratic challenger, Ron "Colonel" Klink (who still only lost by seven points). Santorum's race, which was still fairly closely contested (he won by 6.9 percentage points) didn't help Bush - Gore won the state by 4.2%.

Can Bush win Pennsylvania? Yep. But if Joe Hoeffel can run a prominent, competent campaign against the Republican challenger, and the recent patterns in Pennsylvania hold, the conservative Toomey is not going to do for Bush what Bush appears unable to do for Specter.

What's even stranger is the fact that the conservative base (which, despite the frequent tilts towards intellectual pretension, the National Review represents fairly well) is simply ignoring Bush's endorsement. NR has been pushing Toomey ridiculously hard, with Specter's nickname being simply "the worst Republican Senator". Specter's been written off entirely, with the Club For Growth's chosen one being the new heir to the mantle of Pennsylvania's Class 3 Senate Seat.

Who should win it? From my perspective (wanting Hoeffel and Kerry to win), Specter. And it's not because I think he can't win, but because conservatives themselves have put so much effort into destroying Specter's Republican credentials and distancing themselves from his tenure that he's virtually crippled as a general election candidate. But neither of them are particularly strong candidates - Toomey's negated any ability he has to move to the center or, in fact, act as anything other than a doctrinaire conservative, short of large-scale, damaging flip-flops. If this race is what Republicans want Bush to pin his Pennsylvanian hopes on, then he'd better be shoring up his operations in Ohio and Florida.

Numbers, Schmumbers

To follow up on Ezra's post a bit, watching CNN, there's something else strange that CNN in particular does with polls. Whenever a new/important poll is released, they treat it like it's a part of the same polling structure as all the other polls. It's not just that they're ignoring the past history of the poll in and of itself, but they present poll after poll after poll, as if you can judge jumps from Zogby's last poll to Gallup's current one directly. (This isn't even mentioning the fact that the polls are essentially meaningless right now for anything except predicting the future actions of campaigns, but baby steps, people.)

Well, they're all numbers, so who cares? Number here, number there, subtract it or divide it or calculus it, just so long as we have some sort of horse race to cover. 72% of the media says so, up from 70% last month.

This post is in no way scientifically accurate. But you may still quote it on your show as if it means something.

Question: Why Does Polling Suck?

Answer: Because the media is dishonest with it. I've heard no end of gloating/analysis/reflection on the new Gallup poll results. Those show Bush with a 5% lead over John Kerry during April 16-18. Now, despite the sky is falling tone of the media coverage, Gallup actually titles their poll "Little Change in Presidential Race", as it showed a 2% swing from April 5-8's sample, a change well within the margin-of-error.

Maybe if Gallup was the only polling firm on earth the coverage would be warranted. But lo and behold there are others! Doing the same thing! During the smae period! Joy! So I now refer you over to Zogby who shows Kerry over Bush 47-44% from April 15-17. Notice that both these polls happened 2 days after Bush press conference, so there's no reason for the difference. And shockingly, Zogby's tracking poll shows only a 1-point swing from April 1-4, where Kerry was also ahead.

So the thing we should take from these polls isn't a climb for Bush or a drop from Kerry, it's a hardened electorate registering no change. Gallup and Zogby are clearly using sampling/weighting methods leading them to different numbers, one favoring Bush and one favoring Kerry, and since both are respected firms with reasonable track records the only thing to do is look at the trend lines. Of which there aren't any. Which that Bush's press conference did him absolutely no good and the edlectorate is exactly as divided as before it. Shock! Awe! Peculiar!

Or you can report only one, ignore the existence of the other, and fill up your show with proclamations of doom for John Kerry. You know, whatever you want.

Poll Weirdness

Karl Rove called up CNN to tell them that they should focus more on Bush's positive ads (which they're dutifully doing under the guise of wondering why they should do it). However, what's strange is that now the polls detailing Bush's rise over Kerry are now comparing polls from two months ago, which only serves to create the false impression that Kerry's ratings started falling when Bush aired positive ads (which is untrue to look at the data).

Not only that, but they put up the 2/16-17 results for the 1/29-2/1 CNN/Gallup poll, when the actual results for that poll were 5 points closer.

This gets so strange that I don't even know why anyone's doing what they're doing.

*Grumble*

I'm still pissed about the DNC prank below - that was just lame.

But, alas, we must move on. To polls!

A majority of Americans accept Richard Clarke's charges as true, and Bush's rating on security has fallen to the lowest point of his post-9/11 career. I'm going to predict that Condi and BushDick's testimony will likely push them down further - particularly since there's a bevy of information coming out about just what they didn't do before September 11th, and the attitudes they took in to and through the crisis.

This is the first time in this presidency, I think, that Bush's record of public statements has actually been held up to any real scrutiny, particularly in connection to his present-day policy. For the first time, someone in the media seems to notice that September 11th didn't change everything, and there wasn't some temporal black hole between Election 2000 and September 1th that swallowed the entire period, never to release it for fear of reminding us that there was a period where Bush was president without the crutch of international terrorism. (Remember when Bush was only nonsensically trying to justify everything he did by using tax cuts?)

For anything else...would simply be awful to think of.

Say What?

Matt's found the most confusing poll ever. Marvel at its complexity, exclaim over its paradoxes, bask in the light of clarity's antimatter.

Nader's Numbers

I think something's awry in the land of Poll.

Perhaps it's Nader's lack of party affiliation that's getting these results, perhaps it's something else - but it makes no sense that a candidate who got 2.7% of the vote in 2000 with a better party structure, better campaign organization, and a larger public presence would more than double (in fact, nearly triple) his showing. Is Nader going to be a placeholder candidate for the next few months, the guy who unsure voters put down? Or is he secretly running strong for no reason whatsoever?

Thursday's Child Is Full Of...What The Hell Is That?

Okay, so I've been hearing all day about this Gallup poll where a majority of people will vote for Kerry, but think Bush will actually win. (The latter data isn't included in the link.) I'm tempted to just say that this shows that the American people don't know what the American people think, and ask where the punch bowl is.

However, most of that imbalance can be explained by pessimistic Democrats, at least from what I've seen of the figures. Basically, they really don't like Bush, but they also think his reelection is inevitable. Kerry shouldn't go out and have a national Democratic pep rally (other than the one he'll be having this summer, obviously), but I think what he's got to do is keep Democratic anger going.

At this point, most Democrats are angry enough at Bush that if you just mention Bush and at least two subordinates in a coherent sentence, they'll fill in the blanks with everything else that makes him a horrible president. We're eight months out, which means that everything's subject to change (we can be sure that Kerry will be accused of having had sex with every woman under the age of 60 between Maine and Maryland during his single years), but as long as Democrats are motivated to cast an anti-Bush vote, even if they think his reelection looks probable, Kerry has an ace card up his sleeve - voters that are going to be much harder to deter. Conservatives aren't nearly as pro-Bush as liberals are anti-Bush.

Plus, you know...Kerry's closer to being right than Bush is. That's gotta count for something...

Polling Fantasies

This is wishful thinking cubed with a good dash of reality denial thrown in for taste:

Deeper and Deeper

Oliver's right, Bush's attacks are having very little effect; the polls are still shooting Kerry ahead of Bush even though the waffling imagery has taken hold (respondents felt that Kerry was more likely to change his mind for political reasons than Bush). I wonder if people just don't care about the waffling thing as much as we all think they do?

Update: Whoo boy. John Kerry, this is the way to make me love you. Read that back and forth and tell me who came out on top. And as always, I can't resist a little bit of quoting:

Critical Poll

This poll has Kerry beating Bush 48-44% among registered voters. More important are the poll internals showing 38% of voters committed to Kerry and 33% committed to Bush. That means Kerry has the more committed core group, a hugely important factor in an election riding on turnout. There are more poll internals here, and they're similarly encouraging. Considering the attacks Bush has withstood during this primary, his base has not rallied around him to any great degree. Further, 28% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Kerry while only 8% of Democrats feel favorably towards Bush. Of the two candidates, Bush is showing himself to be significantly more polarizing with a significantly smaller group of core supporters. We're starting this election in a very good position.

Treat It Like It Has Meaning

It's an internet poll, sure, but right now it's 83/17 in favor of an amendment banning same-sex marriage - and you know that it'll find its way into someone's article as a "USA Today poll" if it stays this way.

UPDATE: Damn, I totally read that the wrong way. It's 83/17 no.

Sweetness.

New Polls, Good News

New polling puts both Kerry and Edwards 10-12 points up on Bush - and this is a poll of likely voters.

Something I'm noticing is that a lot of Republican strategists are declaring that Bush will rebound. Now, I'm sure he will, at least a little bit, but this election is largely shaping up to be about what Bush has done. For all the talk of what this election is going to be about, Republicans are simply trying to cherrypick from the overarching drumbeat of the Democratic Party - explaining just what the hell has gone on the past four years.

The best part about it is that the noises Bush is making about a second administration are the exact same noises they made about the first one, which simply plays into an anti-incumbent campaign.

I have to wonder if Bush's low poll numbers are like Hillary's putative candidacy - conservatives are sure they'll rise again when the time is just right.

Hmmm

You think that MSNBC is starting to figure out that Internet polls are inherently meaningless?

(Hint to the braintrust at MSNBC, a contradiction in terms to be sure: this isn't the first time this has happened.)

Live By The Poll, Die By The Poll

CNN's Darryl Kagan is now running a story on Bush's credibility gap and his "once sky-high" poll numbers that have come crashing down to Earth.

Over the past few days, more and more "shaking off the cobwebs" stories have been running from various news sources, and I've noticed that quite a few of them have tones like this. The common conception of Bush as a popular/competent/untouchable president (taken from a freeze frame from around a year and a half ago) is getting shaken up, and the stories are actually much worse than they would have been had Bush been covered properly over the same period of time. Instead of the gradual erosion that we've seen, it's a sudden drop off a cliff, mainly because it's been taken as a given that Bush is still popular.

It helps our side, granted, but it would still be more honest and serve the public discourse far better if the media hadn't been trafficking in an increasingly untrue narrative for months on end.

Exit Polls and the National Review

Why does the National Review always seem to have the first exit polls? This trend has been going on since New Hampshire and it makes no sense. They're a conservative magazine and these are the democratic primaries, why is the Left being so monstrously scooped?

In case you're curious about what the polls say, Kerry is far, far ahead. Kaus must be ready to cry.

Poll Interpretation

Something to chew on before the election results start pouring in: the results of the last USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. We've all heard about Bush's historically low approval, his getting beaten by John Kerry (and potentially by John Edwards), but there's other numbers that underly those results - and which are very bad for Bush and the Republican Party.

The most important area is the set on policy approval. On the economy, foreign policy, Iraq, and healthcare, Bush's policies are disapproved of by a majority of Americans. Every major area in 2004, and a year out, the majority of Americans aren't agreeing with the incumbent's platform.

The other interesting bit was on party approval - what do voters think of the two major political parties?

Democrats: 59 Favorable, 34 Unfavorable.

Republicans: 48 Favorable, 45 Unfavorable.

None of this is good for the national Republican Party.

Kerry v. Bush

The new poll coming out of Quinnipiac has some good news for Kerry. He's spanking Bush 51-43%. Oddly enough, none of the other Democrats are beating Bush in the polling. I say oddly because in past times of candidate coverage, think Clark when he entered or Dean when he was on all the covers, the difference between the publicized candidate ad Bush was rarely far from the other candidate's against Bush. There's often a 3 point variation, but in this case, you're looking at a lot more than that:

Worst Ratings Ever

President Bush is now below 50% in three major polls - Quinnipiac, Newsweek and Zogby, 48, 49 and 49, respectively.

Of course, I think I've figured out the secret of Bush's media-created "popularity". So long as he remains on the plus side of any major issue, he is "popular". It doesn't matter if he can't engender the overall support of a majority or plurality of the American people, so long as there's some area where he is popular, because that's the issue that will determine the 2004 election. Even if it's not.

Polls

Latest CNN/Gallup poll - hopeless loser Howard Dean gained seven points on Bush in a week. Therefore, we must ignore this and focus on whether or not his own "Troopergate" will be the undoing of his campaign.

I can't wait for the Bill Schneider line.

Primary Standings

Where to begin? Here's a rundown of where the Primary stands right now. I'm going to link to Political Wire now and you can go there to check anything I'm saying.

Okay. Clark is now nearly even with Dean in Arizona and 7 points ahead among likely Democratic voters.

Dean's dropped 4 points in Iowa to 24 while Gephardt dropped 2 points to hit 21. Kerry surged three points to tie Gephardt with 21% and Edwards is now at 15%. Remember that support can be moved around if the candidate can't win, so think of the possibilities for Kerry. Imagine what would happen if Kerry won Iowa. Imagine what Kerry would do to win Iowa. Imagine what he might offer John Edwards in return for his supporters.

Moving right along, Dean is falling in New Hampshire as Clark rises. Dean's dropped under 30% to 29% while Clark has surged to 20% and Kerry has hit 15%. That's a strong showing for Clark in a short period of time, we're looking at some good coverage if things continue at this rate. Also remember that the other candidates are going to attempt to crucify Dean in Iowa, hurting both themselves and Dean with their negativity, while Clark remains above the fray.

I want to point out a couple of potential pairings that could emerge. Kerry and Edwards, Gephardt and Edwards and Clark and Kerry. The first two have the potential to effect Iowa and the last can mess around with NH. I don't have to spell these out for anyone, just think of their motives and what they could offer each other.