John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, will launch a foray into the Republican heartland of Virginia on Wednesday with an advertising campaign intended as a show of strength.
The Kerry camp’s inclusion of Virginia in a 20-state, $17-million campaign is unusual because no Democrat has won the state for 40 years. But party strategists believe the expansion of Washington’s liberal suburbs into northern Virginia, and Senator Kerry’s appeal to the high concentration of veterans around naval bases along the Virginia coast, put the state in play.
”We are not going on the air any place we do not think we have a chance to win,” said Mary Beth Cahill, the Kerry campaign manager.
However, some observers portrayed the move as a stunt designed to generate news coverage, give the impression of gathering momentum behind the Kerry campaign and tie down Bush funds in defending the president’s base.
The Kerry camp has already broadcast political advertisements in two other Republican strongholds it regards as vulnerable, Colorado and Louisiana, forcing the Bush campaign to spend money defending them. The president’s strategists have since decided that there is no real threat in Louisiana and taken anti-Kerry advertisements off the air there.
Senator Kerry has been able to venture deep into Bush country because he has raised far more money than his Democratic predecessors — $115-million — and because he is in a strong position in the closely contested states where the outcome will determine the presidency.
A recent poll by Zogby International showed Kerry leading Mr Bush in 11 out of 16 ”battleground states”.
The Bush campaign’s response has been to step up its assault on the senator. A Washington Post analysis published on Monday found that three-quarters of the Bush campaign’s advertisements had been attacks on Kerry, compared with 27% of Kerry advertisements aimed at the president.
The Democratic challenger’s campaign has been aimed principally at burnishing his own image in a bid to convince Americans he is presidential material.
The president’s decision to ”go negative” so early in the campaign threatens to make the 2004 elections the nastiest in recent history. Darrell West, an expert on political advertising at Brown University, told the Washington Post that the Bush campaign’s level of negative campaigning has already surpassed that of the 2000, 1996 and 1992 campaigns. The usual pattern is for campaigns to get nastier as election day draws near.
”I’m anticipating it’s going to be the most negative campaign ever,” Professor West said.
The 1988 campaign run by George Bush, the president’s father, against another Democratic contender from Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, was widely considered the height of negative campaigning — until now.
The Washington Post analysis of the Bush campaign found that many of the allegations against Senator Kerry were ”wrong, or at least highly misleading”, singling out claims by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, that Kerry ”has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all” and that he ”promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office”.
The analysis also found that the Kerry campaign was guilty of distortions in its portrayal of the administration, such as the accusation that ”they have gone it alone” in Iraq, ignoring the role of allies such as Britain. But it concluded that ”Bush has outdone Kerry in the number of untruths”. – Guardian Unlimited Â