Endgame

Unsurprisingly, the blogosphere is abuzz over two issues. Well, three, but the attention paid to the final polls isn't really meaningful.

First, the Osama tape. The right-wing press is delighted, and convinced that this will remind everyone of Bush's "greatest strength." The blogs are much less impressed-- most seem to think it will have no effect, or help Kerry a tiny bit. I'm agreeing with the (surprise!)latter assessment. There aren't many undecideds left. Undecideds tend to break for the challenger. And the top news stories are now a fiasco in Iraq, and the 9/11 mastermind freee andtaunting us.

Second, reports of vote suppression from around the nation. As I mentioned before, it looks like the left is coordinated and energized like never before, with tens of thousands of volunteers heading to battleground states to help GOTV.

I think that the main concern should be GOP lawsuits alleging fraud after the election. We won't see a repeat of Gore's gracious concession this time around. The best hope is that John Zogby's prediction of a Kerry win by 5-7 points comes to pass. The larger the margin, the less chance there will be that the inevitable cries of fraud will be tolerated, even by the fraidy-cat media.

Dan Bartlett's suggestion that it's shameless of Kerry to even comment on the video of OBL shows how desperate they are. My thought is that Kerry should rush out a commercial that uses the footage of OBL along with Bush's notorious "I don't really think about it much" comments. BC04 has been on the defensive all week, and it has to stay that way. And I'm confident that it will.