[cjromero]

If I stand corrected about some specifics, then I stand corrected.

My general point on both issues is still valid, however. One point being that the soft money 527s are helping Kerry much more than they are helping Bush, by an 85% to 15% margin.

Another point being that Kerry brought the Vietnam issue entirely on himself by making it the most important qualification for why he should be President. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The bottom line is that the Kerry campaign has absolutely no clue of how to present their candidate to the American public. That is no one's fault but his own. Rather than focus on domestic issues, Kerry chose to frame himself at the convention as qualified to be president based on his four months of service in Vietnam. He put himself in a box when he voted to authorize Bush to use any means necessary to deal with Iraq, only to later vote against the $87 billion for the troops solely because he was in a heated battle with Dean for the nomination. Advisers close to Kerry, and some of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, have conceded that Kerry voted the way he did based purely on political expediency.

In every presidential campaign, both sides run negative ads that contain inaccuracies and exaggerations. Both sides do so because the ads are effective, despite the fact that people say they don't want to hear any negative ads.

I have said it before and will say it again. If Kerry can't beat an incumbent president that was not elected by a majority of voting Americans given the current state of the economy and the fact that we are in a war that half the nation doesn't support, then he deserves to lose. It's the same with Gore in 2000, when he couldn't beat Bush despite the fact that we were at peace and coming off the largest and longest economic expansion in recent memory.