No Bush for You!

Many more days like today and it becomes very unlikely Bush will recover from the small but solid democratic bump. Iraq is sinking, badly - (note Coulter's nightmare Robert Fisk), and if I may use a painting metaphor, the varnish is peeling in such a way that further application of varnish will only lead to additional cracking. Fair or not, recent terrorism warnings only contributed to the totally fair mistrust of the administration.

Ironically, the final nail in the coffin (which is admittedly like stuffing Dracula in unpierced by a stick, but there you are) will be oil, or more particularly, the combination of gas prices that hurt most people and most of the economy. Or, saying, turning the corner but not signalling and getting T-Boned by a large Chevy pickup. This oil price peak will sift out soon to at the very least another temporary nasty gas price spike, not perhaps helping the Dow/jobs fizzle for the year.

Kerry now leads even the Fox poll (!), not by much, but consistently, and consistently with an extremely motivated base. More telling are the favoribility ratings - Bush runs at about 50 or under, Kerry around 57-58, a likelyhood that undecideds will strongly favor the challenger. Florida just broke for Kerry by about 7, as did Michigan, and Kerry is showing no signs of the 1988 power relax fatal error.

The GOP convention is unlikely to make a new case for Bush that will switch many voters - I say this only because no new angles have been floated, and the president will only do what he always does: reiterate ad nauseum, which doesn't produce new adherents. (A very minor factor is that Swartzenegger was recently betrayed, and insultingly, by the White House on environmental policy on federal lands in California. Expect little of his speech to the convention.) The latest vile attack on Kerry's war record backfired badly when McCain rushed to his defense. But I have no more similies for this paragraph, like a writer exhausted by a lack of food for several hours.

Why point this out? Only this: fight happily, and carry a few voter registration forms with you. It's good luck. (I signed up three in the last couple of days, and have the reemergence of a particularly fetching girlfriend, no further spider attacks and I already have a substantial art paint endorsement/ publicity/ swag offer. More on this later).