The polls and the pundits are still predicting a squeaker in November. The thin rationale for the pundits goes like this: although Bush is sliding in the polls, Kerry isn't ascending and by the election, Kerry's negatives will overwhelm him. That's the entire foundation supporting this position. All other scenarios are against Bush--his record is littered with debacles, his party is splintering and abandoning him, and the mood on the street is ugly. The best hope the Bushies have is to make Americans hate Kerry--a war hero who has served his country for 30 years--more than they hate the guy who appropriated their tax dollars to pay for a failed war, for corporations who sent their jobs to India, and for the ultrawealthy who were supposed to spend us back into solvency (but didn't). Even Karl Rove ain't that good.

Here's the truth: Kerry will win, and he'll probably win big.

There's tons of evidence for this, but we're too close to events to see it. In five months, we'll look back and and admit that we saw the writing on the wall, but just couldn't believe it.

Take a look at Jeff's post to see the evidence he cites for his conclusion, but I have to say that I just don't buy it -- I think he underestimates the range of what can happen in the next 5 months, and overestimates the lasting effect of Bush's current poor situation. As I wrote in a comment on The American Street in response to Jeff's post:

[A]s much as I'd like to believe [these predictions], I cannot bring myself to -- not yet, at least.

There's still quite a bit of time left, and many things can happen. Kerry can meltdown, or Bush can make it appear that he's melted down; Bush can spin the "turnover" in Iraq as a quasi-withdrawal and take pressure off himself that way; the economy could rebound and the jobs data could start moving north (unlikely, but still...); Bush could bite the bullet, realize he's fucked, fire Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz and the rest of the neo-con gang and force Cheney to resign "for reasons of health", then blame everything on them and rebuild his administration with popular Republicans like McCain and conservative Democrats like Zell Miller; Rove could find a Willie Horton-ish soft spot in Kerry's armor; the media would stop its recent skeptical outlook and return to the stance of fawing acceptance they've adopted for the past 3+ years; and so on.

[I can add that perhaps we'll be subjected to another deadly terrorist attack, and, although I believe the result of such would be turning away from the man who couldn't manage to protect us, despite three years to work on it, it's also possible, as others have suggested, that people will again rally around the man in the White House and refuse to change the administration. There's also the long-dreaded "October Surprise," the capture of Osama bin Laden or something similar, but I myself don't believe that OBL is stil.l alive, and other potential "surprises" would hardly carry the same kind of impact.]

A lot can happen in 5 months.

I've been disappointed too many times to allow myself to accept that this thing is in the bag and that it's going to be big. If it's true, than I'm going to reach that conclusion by working away at it incrementally anyway, so why take the risk of jumping into the deep end if it's not necessary?

I'm concerned that this mini-spate of landslide predictions is the result of an overreaction to the nosedive that Bush is currently in, by people who (like myself) desperately want to defeat Bush. The danger with accepting these forecasts is that they can breed overconfidence and a sense of inevitability of Kerry's winning, which would work against a full-time, all-out effort to defeat Bush. (Why work hard for a result that's bound to happen in any event?)

While it might possibly be true that the snapshot of the current moment perhaps points to a big Kerry win (although I'm not so sure it does), to accept that the situation isn't going to change substantially between now and then is, I believe, foolhardy. It's true that almost everything seems to be going our way right now, but life and politics can be terribly unpredictable, and a major perturbation of the current status quo could change everything almost overnight.