Trench warfare 2004.(Politico)

On May 10, pollster John Zogby boldly predicted: "John Kerry will win the election."

He reported that in his latest poll only 43 percent of voters believed Bush deserves to be re-elected, and 51 percent said it's time for someone new. Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie, with very few undecided voters (who historically tend to be against the incumbent when they finally make up their minds). Among voters who cite the economy as most important, Kerry leads Bush 54 to 35 percent; those who cite Iraq also favor Kerry 54 to 35 percent; and those who cite the general war on terrorism prefer Bush 64 to 30 percent. In April, the proportion of Americans who cite Iraq as their top concern rose from 11 to 20 percent. Zogby states that Kerry has been a "good closer"--at least in Massachusetts elections and within the Democratic Presidential primary--and posits that even the improving economic news is too late to save Bush.

This writer looks at that same polling data and the current landscape and sees an increasingly likely Bush victory.

The Gallup poll had Bush and Kerry at 49 to 48 percent in the first week of February, and 48 to 47 percent in the first week of May. Between those two surveys, anti-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke published a book undermining the President as a leader in the war on terrorism, the 9/11 hearings further questioned the Bush administration's preparation and response to terrorism, American deaths in Iraq climbed sharply, and horrific photos of idiot sadism in an American-run prison were released. Yet the Bush-Kerry polling numbers didn't budge.

From this, we learn that candidate George W. Bush does not have a glass jaw. And the 2004 election begins to look like World War I trench warfare, where month-long artillery barrages and attacks fail to move the battle lines. Why don't war, terrorism, and foreign policy news move voters? Perhaps because America is not at war.

Yes, there are more than 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war news is a constant presence on television. But there is no draft, nor even fear of one. This contrasts with Vietnam, where every year 2 million 18-year-old males and their families and friends watched the draft lottery to see if they would be sent into the fray. That makes this war less real to ...