On Labor Day, Nominees Have Work to Do

[papau]

As Bush tries to replace voter "wrong direction" fear with a fear of Kerry - making Kerry the "even more objectionable choice". "The biggest concern for Mr. Kerry's advisers this Labor Day weekend is that Mr. Bush might have accomplished that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/politics/campaign/07stretch.html?pagewanted=print&position=

On Labor Day, Nominees Have Work to Do
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

ASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - With the presidential race down to a two-month stretch, Republicans and Democrats are in unison on two points: President Bush is in a more commanding position than many in his own party forecast only a month ago, while Senator John Kerry is struggling to catch up. Mr. Bush seems to have hit his political stride at the very moment that Mr. Kerry is facing fundamental questions about his candidacy.

Yet if history is any guide, the contest is far from settled. For all of Mr. Bush's success at his convention in New York last week, the underlying dynamics that have made Republicans view him as an endangered incumbent for much of this year remain very much in place: the nation's unease about its future, the deaths in Iraq and the unsteady economy.

Though Mr. Kerry, the Democratic challenger, has yet to come up with an overarching theme for his campaign even at this late date - an absence that came into sharp relief after Mr. Bush's disciplined convention built on a message of security - he is a politician who has always seemed to run best when he is on the verge of defeat. Even on Labor Day, the traditional start of the general election campaign, when voter opinions are beginning to set, he still has 57 days to make his case.

"I don't think either party is where they want to be going into the last 60 days," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network, a group of moderate Democrats. "It's just very unsettled right now."

If there is any lesson about this election, conducted in a supercharged atmosphere created by 24-hour news cycles and the chaotic power of the Internet, it is that dynamics and public opinion change fast. Who in December would have predicted that Mr. Kerry would defeat Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination or that he would have gone on to raise almost as much money as Mr. Bush? <snip>