Well, if the Bush campaign would throw together a really good ad, I think it would be damaging. But I am not completely happy with the Bush campaign. They have missed to many opportunities!

What we need is for someone to break the story about Kerry's discharge from the Navy in a major media outlet.

I've read about it on the Internet in several places and it looks legit but no one has tried very seriously to get it picked up.

I agree about the yawn factor, and for the same reasons you stated. Anyone still voting for Kerry is simply anti-Bush all the way and would vote the Democratic ticket regardless. Sad state of affairs, but the MSM will absolutely not challenge Kerry on this. If they were going to do that they would have demanded his military records, which they have been unapologetically incurious about. If we don't win, the MSM and the Democratic party will feel emboldened to do this again. If Kerry can be elected, ANYONE can.

Alex, if Bush-leaning undecideds weren't swayed by the Air National Guard stories in two gubernatorial elections and the 2000 race, what makes you think that a 30-year-old story about Kerry's discharge would sway Kerry-leaning undecideds?

More importantly, if the Air National Guard story just wasn't important, why is the story of Kerry's discharge? Both stories are just examples of partisans trying to dig up dirt on the other guy without concern for whether that dirt is relevant or timely.

It's too bad so many bloggers whom I respect got so caught up in their own intrinsic partisanship that they jumped on the bandwagon. Friends, "Candidate exaggerates during stump speech" is not news. I don't care how good your case is — Kerry's been running on a platform of diplomacy, and here are diplomats who deny that he spoke the truth — or how persuasively you make it. It's just not important eight days before the election.

Most voter polls have consistently put President Bush and Senator John Kerry in a near tie in presidential race, but some projections that use economic-based models say it's Bush in November.

An Economy.com model gives Bush 373 electoral college votes, well ahead of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win. Kerry lands only 10 states, according to the model -- Illinois and California are the only two outside a handful of East Coast states.

The model seeks to guess voter behavior by looking at per capita income growth and inflation trends in the states. It also plugs in some non-economic factors such as a political party's share in the last presidential election.

The model does suggest "President Bush is going to win a big victory," said Gus Faucher, a senior economist from Economy.com, a consultant. Still Faucher isn't convinced that the economic-based forecasting model will be right in November.

"The election is going to be closer than this," he said. "At this point we're going to project a Bush victory, but it's going to be an interesting month." The two remaining debates between Bush and Kerry are likely to play a key role, he said.

This is great news for the President since Kerry has been down playing the US Economy...more to come,

TexasRenfro

I'm, as they say, underwhelmed.