InstaPundit - I guess we can call this an informal Democratic focus group:
Near the end of the night's broadcast, I took a poll. How many people thought Kerry was going to win?
The room contained liberal and Democratic voters of different races, national origins, incomes, professions and generations. Not a single solitary one raised a hand.
My stomach did a little flip-flop. I'd underestimated the depth of John F. Kerry's problem, his lack, to quote a phrase from the Bush I years, of the "vision thing." No one can win the presidency without mobilizing the base, and Kerry's base, uninspired and dispirited, is weakening.
Ouch. (Via PoliPundit).
And Ryan Sager reports a similar experience:
I watched President Bush’s acceptance speech tonight at a sushi bar on the Lower East Side with a group of reporters from a prominent Washington, D.C.-based publication. The whole time: heckling. Every. Single. Line.
Now, we’ve all seen the polls (or read about them) where the press corps routinely leans Democratic by a factor of about ten-to-one. Still, it was a bit shocking.
It was a little like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but with reporters instead of robots.
Every line of the speech, every item on Bush’s laundry list of domestic candy (yuck, too sweet), they had something snide to say. More money for community colleges? Somehow not good enough. Education? Bush sucks -- and any school showing improvement under No Child Left Behind is just fudging its numbers. Iraq? Don’t get them started.
But here's the clincher:
The punch line here, however, is this: Everyone at the table expected Bush to win. No anger. No denial. Just acceptance.
And that's before the polls came out. |
