Morris on the Kerry Campaign

Dick Morris is one of the commentators we link to on a “for what it’s worth” basis. Sometimes he makes sense, sometimes he seems wildly off base. But he’s generally interesting.
Today, Morris argues that John Kerry is in deep trouble. First, Morris believes the polls that give President Bush a double-digit lead. This issue comes down to whether a pollster should weight his poll results so as to achieve a pre-determined mix of Republicans and Democrats, and thus avoid “oversampling” of one party or the other. Morris thinks not:

We feel that political party is not a demographic, like gender or race or age. If the survey finds more Republicans than usual, we think it’s because the country has become more Republican, so we treat the result as a indicator of national mood, not of statistical error.
Time and Newsweek both picked up major moves toward the GOP in the wake of the convention.

Morris applauds the Kerry campaign’s apparent resolve to talk less about Vietnam, and more about the economy. However, he sees limitations on this approach:

[I]n its focus on the economy, the Kerry team is likely to lose sight of one basic problem: In running against a bad economy, it is helpful if the economy is bad. With an unemployment rate approaching 5 percent, they’ll have a hard time making the case.

Morris also wonders about the loyalty of new Kerry advisers Paul Begala and James Carville:

Both men are primarily loyal to the Clintons

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