"mikee" wrote in message
...
I hope Kerry gets the Democratic nomination. It will almost guarantee
Bush's
reelection.

Mike Eberlein

Mike, get your head out of the clouds. You must have seen that CNN/Gallup
poll that has Kerry ahead of Bush right now.

That doesn't tell us anything about what will happen in November. But it
should tell you that nothing is even close to "guaranteeing" Bush's
reelection. As it was in 2000, the basic split among the voters is pretty
close to 50-50.

It's really up for grabs. My interpretation of the polls and current events
is that the election will turn on how events actually roll out between now
and election time. If it's no better for Bush than it is right now, likely
he's toast.

However, it probably won't get a lot worse for him than it is now. My guess
is that the lack of WMD will blow over, that the spin machine at the White
House will hammer hard on the idea that it was all irrelevant, anyway, until
everybody forgets why we supposedly went to war in the first place.

And there has to be some pickup in employment by November. Last month's
productivity figures were low (2.4%). There's a good chance that means that
employers have squeezed all they can out of their employees. If we have even
modest growth in GDP, employment *ought* to start tracking the general
economic growth by then.

If so, that could be Bush's salvation. That's assuming no more surprises
crop up, of course.

Ed Huntress