Winning the Debate

Daily Reality Check
Winning the Debate
By Mike Lux
American Family Voices
10/15/2004

As part of our ongoing effort to keep you fully informed of current political events and their consequences, The Daily Reality Check is featuring a weekly political analysis column by political strategist Mike Lux that will appear each Friday.

Politics at its best is a clear, passionate debate about the different philosophies that our political leaders bring to the table, and that's what the presidential and vice presidential debates have shown this year. The 2004 election has certainly had its ugly and painful sides - the occasional drift and lack of rapid response to the Kerry campaign, the blatant lying and slander of the Bush campaign and their allies - but the nature of this campaign has also brought out the clear differences in values and governing philosophy between the Republicans and Democrats. That is in marked contrast to some elections, such as 2000, where the rhetoric of Bush and Gore at times seemed virtually identical.

This kind of clear, passionate debate is a joy to behold. And when it happens, by the way, Democrats win - as they did last night for the fourth time in a row. The 2000 and 2002 Democratic strategies of trying to lessen differences on major issues, while picking out a few narrowly crafted programmatic ideas like prescription drugs to run on clearly didn't work. Bush has moved so boldly to the right on so many issues, and attacked the Democrats so vehemently, that to try to downplay differences on major issues would have been an absurd strategy (not that there aren't Democrats who would have wanted to try it.) Fortunately, John Kerry has not pursued that course of action.

The election and political debate we've had instead has become a hold no punches contest. We now have the clearest contrast in both substance and style since the 1964 battle between aggressively liberal LBJ, with his plans for more civil rights legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and the "Great Society's" war on poverty versus Barry Goldwater's openly Libertarian small government conservatism. This election, we have Bush with his unapologetic defense of pre-emptive war in Iraq and massive tax cuts for business and the wealthy contested with Kerry's increasingly clear expression of multi-lateral foreign policy combined with national health care reform and progressive tax and economic policy.

So what happens now? Obviously, we have a long way to go with the possibility of major events in the world, or here in the U.S., to shake things up, and perhaps an October surprise or two from the Bush team. But right now, I feel very much like we're on a trend toward a Democratic election victory, perhaps by a surprising margin. Here's what I see happening that makes me predict this:



In each of the debates, even the ones where the overall numbers on who won were more even than the blow out in the first debate, undecided and swing voters, especially in the battleground states, strongly favored the Kerry/Edwards team message and style.

In an election with a controversial and well defined incumbent, undecided voters almost never break at the end toward the incumbent.

Kerry's horse race number, which is now even with Bush in high 40s, continued to trail the number which says it's time for a change, which has consistently stayed in the low 50s. Add to that the fact that Kery is underperforming with some traditionally Democratic demographic groups, it's clear he still has room to grow.

Polling shows that Kerry has clearly reassured and answered voters' questions about him personally, which is what was holding his numbers down in the polling.

The registration numbers on the ground in the battleground states have continued to clearly favor the Democrats, in many states by huge margins.


This election is not over. There are still plenty of twists and turns, and potential October surprises, and there are still millions to be raised in GOTV/election protection dollars. Republicans in key states like Florida and Ohio have shown themselves to be willing to, and good at, stealing elections. But it's looking increasingly like Kerry might win this election by too big a margin for it to be stolen. And that's happening in great part due to the vigorous political debate we're having in 2004, a debate that Democrats clearly seem to be winning