Truespeak

Today, the LA Times released it's latest national poll showing Bush leading Kerry by three points.

President Bush heads into next week's Republican National Convention with voters moving slightly in his direction since July amid signs that Sen. John F. Kerry has been nicked by attacks on his service in Vietnam, a Times poll has found.

For the first time this year in a Times survey, Bush led Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49% among registered voters, compared with 46% for the Democrat. In a Times poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2-percentage-point advantage over Bush.

Of course the Republicans are touting this as legitimate polling. Not that I doubt the legitimacy of the LA Times, but when the Times released a poll earlier in the election cycle that showed Kerry in the lead the Republicans claimed that you couldn't trust a shoddy liberal rag like the LA Times. The talking heads from the right claimed that the Times had slanted their sample group by including too many registered Democrats. In their eyes, the poll was untrustworthy and a perfect example of the liberal media bias.

Oh, what a difference two months can make. On today's Rush Limbaugh Show, the flunky filling in (I don't know who it was and I don't think it really matters) was about to have an orgasm talking about how much this must be distressing the Kerry campaign. Of course they don't discuss any of the internal numbers, that wouldn't support their cause.

Yet warning signs continue to blink at Bush. Fully 54% of voters said the country was not better off because of Bush's policies and that it should move in a new direction — although that represented an improvement for Bush from the 59% who felt that way last month.

Asked if Bush deserved reelection, 47% of voters said yes and 49% said no. By contrast, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the last two presidents who won a second term, polled 56% and 57% on that question, respectively, in other polls at roughly this time in their campaigns.

While 45% of those polled said Bush's economic policies had left the country worse off, 27% believed they had improved conditions. Independents fell on the negative side of that ledger by nearly 3 to 1. And 52% of all voters said the country was heading down the wrong track.

Voters were far more likely to identify Bush than Kerry as inflexible and unwilling to admit his mistakes. Pluralities picked Kerry over Bush when asked which man had better ideas for strengthening the economy and which was more likely "to build respect for the United States around the world."

All this Republican bluster just goes to show that they are willing to support anything that helps their cause. This is the reason that Bush is unwilling to denounce the Swiftboaters. Remember it was this exact same kind of smear tactic that Bush used to help defeat McCain in the 2000 primaries and now that it's proving useful again he's not going to denounce it just yet. I guarantee that if the Swiftboaters were targeting Bush instead of Kerry, the Republicans would be acting exactly the way the Kerry campaign is. Luckily for Bush, there is no Air National Guardsmen for Truth.

As for the poll numbers, it's still within the margin of error so I'm not going to get too worked up about it. After all, the only poll that really matters will be taken on November 2.