Centerfield

When you guys raise $9 million, you'll have no problem rounding up 500 swing voters.

You know what would be way more interesting to me? If an honest broker did some surveying in an attempt to determine the rate, during the past 3.5 years, at which republicans went democratic _and_ the rate at which democrats went republican. Concurrently, you could ask questions probing the reasons for the switch, although I doubt we'd see many surprises in the attributions. It's really the rates that would be telling.

My sense is that the aftermath of 9/11 has left us with many people who are in essence one issue voters. In the Bsphere, I run into way more people who have "left the left" but the Bsphere is very far from a random sample, so I hesitate to generalize. My gut tells me that undecideds will swing Bush due to distrust of Kerry's national security views, but my gut has been reinforced by the Bsphere for months.

This is a very savvy idea onMoveOn's part, and I expect the GOP to do something similar. Capturing undecideds is going to determine the outcome, I don't buy the idea that base turnout is going to be the difference. I expect turnout to be the highest we've seen since the 70s.

People who are undecided will respond to ads showing people just like them, who express the same doubts as them and go on express urgency and optimism about their decision to drop the old team who disappointed them for the new team that feels like a better fit now and is full of sensible ideas and shiny promises.

Note that if both sides air ads like this, it will in essence provide a point-counterpoint debate that is bound to re-create the debate that goes on here between centrist undecideds. That might be nice.