They've entered … the Gloating Zone

Look at the lines at the Michael Moore movie! Look at President Bush's approval rating slip below 50 percent! Listen to the respected Democratic congressman who, when I asked how he thought the election was shaping up, took note of these facts before snapping simply: "It's over."

It's scary but true: Democrats have entered the Gloating Zone. And this is before the convention gives the ticket a bump that will really go to its head.

Yes, Bush is beatable, but this is hardly the same thing as having been beaten.

For most of the country, and especially for that small sliver of Americans who apparently still have an open mind (and who therefore decide who wins), the campaign hasn't even begun.

Candidates always tell their supporters that complacency means death, but in this case it's truer than usual.

Take the economy. John Kerry and John Edwards will still be able to say as November approaches that Bush has the only record of job loss on his watch since Herbert Hoover, but the outlook here is much better than it was a year ago.

With Bush able to claim more than a million new jobs in the last year, things can plausibly be cast as moving "in the right direction."

To insist otherwise lets Bush tar Democrats as dour "pessimists" -- a slur that must poll well or the president wouldn't have adopted it as his stock "the economy stinks" rebuttal.

What's more, the record budget and trade deficits -- the true crippling legacies of Bush's first term -- appear to have no political bite at all. In 1992, Ross Perot made the red ink a national crusade and swung the election to Bill Clinton.

So far Kerry seems to have judged that opening this can of worms -- which might mean talking about the steps needed to address the deficit while also funding his progressive agenda -- requires more candor than he'd like to offer voters just now. As a result, the absence of a Perot-style figure this year means that Bush may pay little price for his mammoth irresponsibility.

Next comes Iraq. Democrats seem to welcome bloody news as proof that Bush's days are numbered. But wherever you stood on the war, this much seems irrefutable: By November, Iraq will have had four months of very brave Iraqi faces running an Iraqi government. Iraqi leaders will be asking U.S. troops to stay. Iraqis will be planning an election a few months hence with United Nations help.

Kerry will rightly say that Bush has followed much of his advice in moving things to this point. But saying you got the president to move faster in the right direction may not seem very compelling when you're standing next to the president who has been doing the actual moving.

When Bush turns to Kerry in the debates and says, "I'm confused -- do you now wish you had voted against ousting Saddam Hussein?" Kerry's answer -- whatever it is -- may play further into the flip-flopper trap that Karl Rove has laid for him at a time when Bush will be arguing for "steadiness" and "conviction."

There's more. Political pros say I'm wrong about its likely impact, but it seems plain that, come fall, we'll see big GOP ad buys that say: "Even as he led a global war on terror, George W. Bush broke the gridlock to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and passed a historic education reform with bipartisan support."

I know Democrats have good critiques on all this, but if you're a swing voter in front of your TV, it may still sound pretty good.

I'm not saying Democrats don't have great material with which to frame the debate on their terms. But people who've predicted cakewalks recently have had a habit of facing a comeuppance.

That's why Clinton is right: Kerry should campaign as if Iraq were stable, the economy was humming, and Osama bin Laden has been caught.

At this point, most people have no notion of Kerry's affirmative agenda. Some of this is unfair (and the media's fault) -- Kerry's health plan, for example, is the most interesting and ambitious domestic policy proposal in years, and he's put real money behind it.

But the rest remains a blur. And those other guys are ruthless!

The only sure thing is that this election will be close, and probably ugly. As they head toward their convention, Democrats need to get out the gloat, and fight for every vote.

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