CABANA BOY LIMBO:

NOBODY LIKES HIM (DICK MORRIS, September 15, 2004, NY Post)

The Fox News poll asked Kerry supporters if their vote for the Democrat could best be described as motivated by support for Kerry (41 percent) or by opposition to Bush (51 percent). By contrast, Bush voters emphatically say, by 82-13, that they are voting for the president rather than against the challenger.

This puts Kerry in a tough position in the coming debates. He has no real base of support and any attenuation of the dislike his voters feel for Bush will weaken him substantially. All Bush has to do is to persuade a few Kerry voters to stop disliking him, and he can get their votes. There is no residual affection for the Democrat to get in the way of their switching to the president.

The polls already have shown how Kerry's own voters break almost evenly on the issues, with half supporting the war in Iraq and half opposing it, and almost equal numbers saying we must stay the course as say we should bring the troops home.

So Kerry can't use issues to hold his own in the debates: Whatever he says will antagonize some of his base. And now it's plain that he can't rely on personal popularity to hold them, since most are just voting against Bush.

If the president gives an even moderately effective presentation and comes across as even somewhat likeable, he can cut deeply into Kerry's vote.

One of the things that folks tend to forget about is that recently the campaigns of successful incumbent Democrats suggest that there's a lid on the party at 50%, far lower than that for Republicans. Mr. Kerry could test whether there is any floor.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 15, 2004 01:43 PM