Salon writer Tim Grieve proves that he is completely full of CRAP.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Typically, it's true that undecided voters typically break for the challenger, but this isn't a typical year. The nation is scarred from Sept. 11 and mired in a war in Iraq. There's a cultural divide so wide that people can't talk across it and don't understand each other when they do. Americans can't agree on the way out of the nation's problems or even what they are. The idea of staying the course has a powerful pull on many Americans. As McCurry said Friday morning in Orlando, Americans who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 may have a hard time looking back now and saying they were wrong. The bin Laden tape could make it easier, or it could make it harder.

Kerry stepped into the epicenter of the 2000 election Friday afternoon, holding an outdoor rally in West Palm Beach. The wounds from four years ago are still fresh here, but the crowd that greeted Kerry was so small that reporters walking into the event literally stopped and stared, looking around for the rest of the people who must have been there somewhere. Even worse: As Kerry rambled off into a series of statistics about healthcare costs and the like, more than a few of the people in the crowd wandered off. The glory days of that Springsteen rally in Madison seemed a very long way away, and with bin Laden on TV, Springsteen himself seemed irrelevant.

There will be ups and downs in these final days -- McCurry was dancing with Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter in Ohio Thursday night, then glum-faced and serious in Orlando Friday morning. The candidate was serious Friday, too, unveiling a final-stretch stump speech that ignores the news of the day and focuses hard on what Kerry calls a fundamental choice between George W. Bush's record of failure and his own hopeful plan for a better future. "It is time for America to put the politics of polarization behind us," Kerry said Friday morning in Orlando. "It is time to appeal to the best instincts of Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike. It is time for America to renew the faith that there is something for every single one of us to do -- and challenges for each of us to try."

Again and again in Florida Friday, Kerry said: "You can choose a fresh start. And when I'm president, that's what you'll get." Although Kerry sounded optimistic, he knew that it's still an if, not a when. And if he didn't know that when he spoke, he certainly knows it now.

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[jdots]

1. Maybe they keep the guy as a bad example

he will implode.