The kumbaya party (continued)

LAST SUNDAY, the results of a New York Times/CBS News poll showed that this is shaping up as an unusual campaign. Fully 79 percent of those surveyed reported that they had already made up their minds, compared with 64 percent in July 2000. Bush’s job-approval rating was 84 percent among Republicans and 16 percent among Democrats, the widest such gap ever recorded in an election year. What this means is that the electorate is deeply divided, with fewer undecided voters than is typical. It also likely means that Kerry and Bush will each get a smaller bounce out of his national convention than is typical. (Not that such bounces mean much. You may recall that Michael Dukakis came out of his convention in 1988 with a huge lead over George H.W. Bush.)

Reinforcing that are recent findings by the Vanishing Voter Project, at Harvard’s Kennedy School. According to a recent survey, just 28 percent of respondents said they planned to watch some or most of the Democratic National Convention, down from 31 percent four years ago. Yet 50 percent said they had paid at least some attention to the presidential campaign, nearly double the percentage four years ago. So yes, Kerry’s speech will be important, as was Clinton’s and Kennedy’s and that of Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, and of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. But there’s a long slog ahead.

Thomas Patterson, the director of the Vanishing Voter Project, says that with Bush’s low approval rating, Kerry should come out of the convention with a lead of six to 12 points, a considerable improvement over the dead heat he’s been in since wrapping up the nomination in March. The message, Patterson says, should be that "this guy may not be the best thing since sliced bread, but damn it, he’s a good alternative, he’s not a weak alternative." Patterson adds: "I think what people are looking for is strength. Bush projects strength." But he believes that, given Bush’s poor numbers, Kerry should be able to build a lead within a week to 10 days that Bush will have a hard time overcoming.

At a time when the electorate is so divided, and the undecided vote is so small, Kerry might be tempted to play to the base — to hammer away at traditional Democratic issues such as abortion rights and labor concerns in order to drive up turnout among Kerry supporters as much as possible. Certainly that’s what the Republicans are doing by attempting to use gay marriage as a way to accomplish their goal of increasing turnout among evangelical Christian voters by three million over the last presidential election.

But such a strategy is neither necessary nor smart, according to Harold Ickes, a former top aide to Bill Clinton who’s now chief of staff of America Coming Together (ACT), a political-action committee that plans on spending $125 million to bring Democratic-leaning voters to the polls this fall. ACT is focusing its efforts on 17 swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Maine, and New Hampshire. The goal, Ickes said at a briefing at the Four Seasons Hotel, is to appeal to two groups of voters. "You can’t win with base alone, and you can’t win with swing alone," he said. Afterward, he told me that though "Kerry is still very hazy in the minds of most voters," he’s not concerned for one simple reason: Bush is energizing the base of not just the Republican Party, but of the Democratic Party as well.

Which brings us back to George W. Bush, the Great Uniter. On Monday, I had a chance to ask two Massachusetts congressmen — Ed Markey and Bill Delahunt — what Kerry most needs to accomplish this week. Their answers differed. Markey said Kerry needs to stress national security, to show that he’s a "tough guy." Delahunt believes that Kerry needs to do more things like attend Red Sox games so that people "are comfortable with him."

Both, though, agreed on what Kerry will face as soon as the convention is over: vicious, negative attacks by the Republicans. "We have to call them for what they are. When they lie, we shouldn’t be pleasant," said Delahunt. Added Markey: "They’re going to go totally negative. If he [Kerry] gets hit, he’s going to hit back."

The national convention is a curious institution. It hasn’t chosen a presidential candidate, or even made a significant decision, in several decades. It’s potentially a great way for the parties to introduce their candidates, but the network news divisions have cut way back on coverage, to just three hours a week, because of the utter lack of news. Mainly they’ve become an obsession for political and media junkies who watch them on one of the cable news channels or C-SPAN. Given the security hassles involved in running a convention post-9/11, it is not inconceivable that they will be drastically scaled back before 2008 rolls around.

John Kerry and John Edwards will leave Boston with a united Democratic Party behind them and a modest bump in the polls. Still to come: the withering attacks of Karl Rove and company, and the televised presidential debates.

A great speech on Thursday will get the Kerry-Edwards ticket off to a good start. But there’s still a long way to go.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com. Read his continuing coverage of the Democratic National Convention on Media Log, at BostonPhoenix.com.