It looks like game belongs to John Kerry (AJC may need subscription)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/2004/072904.html

It looks like game belongs to John Kerry

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/29/2004

(snip)

Sitting up in the stands, off the field of play, it's often hard to tell whether a ball hit to the outfield is going to be caught or will carry over the fence for a home run. So you don't watch the ball, you watch the outfielder, because he has the best perspective. By his actions, he'll tell you where the ball is going.

The same approach works in a variety of fields, including politics. Those of us on the outside, without access to the daily state-by-state tracking polls pouring in to the Bush and Kerry campaigns, can nonetheless get a pretty good idea of the state of the race by watching the outfielder, so to speak. And the outfielder says that this race is John Kerry's to lose.

Certainly the Democrats believe that to be the case. A challenger hoping to defeat an incumbent has two basic tasks. The first, and often most difficult, is to convince voters that the incumbent has done a poor job. Unless you clear that hurdle -- and many presidential challengers never do -- it's impossible to move on to the second step of convincing voters that the challenger can do better.

(snip)

A glance at the Republican outfielders in right field suggests that they too have come to that conclusion. In baseball terms, they're running hell-bent for the fence, desperately hoping to snatch back a ball that seems destined for the bleachers.

(snip)