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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
America turning purple over presidential race
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Editor
 |  President Bush greets supporters after a rally in Dubuque, Iowa, Tuesday. |
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 VIDEO |
 CNN's Carol Costello previews the candidates' campaign day.
 CNN's Bill Hemmer explores the chance of another Election 2000.
 CNN's Jeff Greenfield on Jewish and Hispanic votes in Florida.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- We don't live in red and blue states anymore. That's yesterday's wisdom. Today we live in a purple nation, where Hawaii and New Jersey, and maybe even Michigan, are trending toward President Bush, and Ohio and Florida, and maybe even Arkansas, are falling into John Kerry's column. Even Missouri is tightening. Has anyone polled Wyoming recently? What about DC?
Today in Iowa Kerry talks about clear choices, fresh starts and missing explosives. Also in Iowa, despite promises to the contrary, he'll make just one more "TelePrompTer speech." Kerry also touches down today in Minnesota, an increasingly purple state with a big Ralph Nader question mark.
Bush, who made overt appeals to wayward Dems yesterday as part of a late-breaking bid to court the swing, will be joined in that effort today by Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia as he campaigns in Pennsylvania, western Ohio and Michigan, which GOP tracking polls show is a dead heat. The appeal to Reagan/Miller Dems will center on national security, education and values. In the Detroit area, Bush will focus on the values part of that trifecta, picking up the support of African-American clergy who previously voted Democratic but prefer Bush's stand on gay marriage. (Proposal 2, the initiative to ban gay marriage in Michigan, is favored 2-to-1, a new poll shows.)
Bush-Cheney exudes 11th-hour confidence, highlighting Kerry's blue-state quagmire. "Kerry's travel schedule and ad buys do not match his campaign's spin about the status of the election. From the rust belt to the upper Midwest, [today's] campaign events are evidence that President Bush has the energy and momentum in the final six days," spokesman Steve Schmidt writes in a campaign e-mail, noting that both candidates are spending today in Gore states.
Speaking of blue states turning purple, Bush has closed a four-point gap with Kerry in New Jersey, where each candidate has 46 percent among likely voters, according to a new Quinnipiac Poll released today. (Al Gore, remember, carried Jersey by 16 points.) Twenty-seven percent of registered voters said a candidate visit is "very important" in deciding how they vote; 26 percent said it's "somewhat important," according to the poll.
A Kerry visit? Unlikely, given the wave of "campaign in crisis?" headlines that would spawn (and that's just in the Grind). No, there's only one man who can turn Jersey around for Kerry, and he is The Boss. Bruce "No Surrender" Springsteen will be out on the trail Thursday with Kerry in Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, and also may hold an election-eve rally with Kerry in Ohio. No word on whether Bruce will add a home-state visit to his itinerary.
Another purple state -- Minnesota. Kerry campaigns later today in Rochester at the Mayo Civic Center, joined by Carole King, where we think he'll say something about a clear choice and a fresh start. (Jon Bon Jovi joins Kerry earlier today in Iowa.)
Minnesota hasn't gone GOP for president since 1972, but Republicans now hold all but two of the statewide offices. (And, as Steve Schmidt reminds us, Ronald Reagan's only foray into Minnesota in his 1984 race against native son Fritz Mondale was an airport rally on his way back to California on Election Day, but he came within 3,761 votes of winning the state.)
Perhaps even more notable, Nader drew one of his best 2000 showings in Minnesota, taking 5 percent of the vote. His numbers, of course, are far lower this year. But the race is also tighter in general.
During his "fresh start, clear choice" speech today in Sioux City, Iowa, Kerry will hit Bush over his "hard work" complaint, lampooned in a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit. "You know, the president likes to run around the country telling you how his job's been hard work. How he's had to put up with corporate scandals and a tough economy and a weak stock market over the last four years," Kerry will say, according to a draft of his remarks. "He likes to tell us how hard it's been for him. Well you know what? We need a president who understands how hard it is on you, not him."
Meanwhile, al Qaqaa-gate rolls into Day Three with Camp Kerry focusing on new reports that U.S. soldiers were never ordered to search the site for explosives.
NBC News clarified its Monday report that was heavily pushed by Bush-Cheney. (It wasn't a CBS/Bush-Guard-record clarification, but it did take some wind out of the Bush campaign's defense.) Their embed reporter said yesterday that there was no extensive search by the military unit when they reached Al Qaqaa, because their assignment was to reach Baghdad. CNN's Jamie McIntyre reported last night, "No weapons under IAEA seal were found, but the soldiers were advancing on Baghdad, and officials acknowledge they weren't ordered to and didn't conduct a thorough inspection."
The Pentagon confirmed that the site wasn't kept under guard by U.S. forces, and was not completely secured between April 10 and May 27, 2003, when a full search team arrived. But McIntyre reports that U.S. officials say while small scale looting was possible, they are highly dubious trucks needed to move the explosives could have gone in unnoticed, in an area where there was a military presence.
"Now we know that the commander of these troops made very clear that his unit's sole mission was to rush to Baghdad despite specific warnings about this facility," said Joe Lockhart in a statement released this morning at 12:30 a.m. ET. "The fact that White House officials, including the vice president, continue to manipulate the truth about what happened with regard to these explosives is cause for grave concern."
Bush continues to have little to say on the topic. He worked a rope line in Wisconsin yesterday and ignored a question from CNN's Matt Byrne, instead offering Byrne a repeated glance of indignation.
But Dick Cheney did have something to say. At a rally in Pensacola, Florida, he told the crowd, "it is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad. John Kerry doesn't mention that, nor does he mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured and are destroying."
Also on the trail
In California yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger offered a preview of what he'll say in Ohio on Friday when he campaigns for Bush-Cheney. "This reminds me of the days when Ronald Reagan was in office and he was fighting communism," Schwarzenegger said. "There were some people out there criticizing him [Reagan], saying 'This is crazy, he's a warmonger' and all of this kind of criticisms. And in the end, he proved right. He wore them down because he showed great leadership, and communism fell apart."
And finally today, we bring you Jenna Bush, appearing in Columbus at Ohio State University, mixed up her four-letter Midwest schools. "Here at Iowa State University .. oh gosh, Iowa ... I totally lost it , Ohio State University and see all of this energy on behalf of my dad." Give her a break, guys. She lost it. Totally.
But then, those sorts of missteps by Kerry are now the grist for a radio spot in Wisconsin, where the ad reminds the football-crazy state he once said "Lambert Field" instead of "Lambeau Field" when referring to the home of the Green Bay Packers.
