This is from a good friend (none / 0)
He is in the libertarian wing of the repulicans but will not vote bush. He has run many campaign's for the republicans. I will leave it there so that he remains nameless. He fits pretty close to you on views. I know he is a prolife catholic, not sure on the union thing but I think with globalization he understands the need for unions. On the election as a whole and kerry's problem even with some of us this is what he thinks.
"back when i was mucking about in things the core constituencies were something like 38 repub / 43 dem with about 20 swing. my guess is that the country has lurched to the right (it tends to follow the bully pulpit...).
i would expect bush's core to be pretty damn solid.
too bad kerry doesn't have the pedigree to appear more sincere...this is why it is very hard to elect a legislator to an executive position. if successful, a legislator tends to have a long record (quite often on both sides of an issue, because the skill set of a good legislator is 75% of the pie - compromise...).
in spite of all of this, the country continues to be pretty much evenly divided (look at the NYT best selling books list...O'Riley v. Franken; Zell Miller v. Oniel; Hanity v. Clark). the tactical prob for the d's is that the election is not decided by popular vote...it is an electoral college vote. the r's have entrenched their strenghts here with very strong showings in statehouses and consequently in redistricting (its the same exact thing that kept the d's in power for 5 decades...they dug in and used the minutia of local govt. to strengthen the top especially every 10 years during redistricting season).
finally -- the 3 great motivators:
Love
Fear
Hate
...and the weekest of these is love. this is why 'negative' comercials work. everyone squeels like a stuck pig, but the #s start moving every time. with negative ads, both the target and the promoter take a hit in the #s. one hopes that the target's #s move more quickly than you own. this is why all campaigns open with positive pieces, trying to drive #s up before the missles strike...
on my last campaign we spent $1 million on positive comercials for over a month with no oponent response. we polled; no one could remember seeing one (the verbatims were empty). 2 days into our negative blitz (about $100K) and 68% could identify in a verbatim the content, image, etc. "
For what it is worth and outside events will have an impact...