BOINNNNNNNG!!!! (!!!)

Via the Blogfaddah, who is now so influential that Time is sending him press releases:

BUSH OPENS DOUBLE DIGIT LEAD, ACCORDING TO NEW TIME POLL

AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, 52% WOULD VOTE FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, 41% WOULD VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY, AND 3% WOULD VOTE FOR NADER

That’s just one poll, but if the rest track with it, we now know why Kerry melted down on the air last night.

This election is looking more and more like 1988 every day, especially given Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich’s wig-out today, promising a boatload of “independent” Dem dirty tricks.

UPDATE: A couple of readers note that Estrich’s rant appears to be out of character for her, and I tend to agree… except that this is what Estrich was like during the ’88 campaign. I thought she’d gotten over it, but the dynamics of this race are so similar to Bush-Dukakis, I’m not surprised she’s reverting.

Think about it: the Dems convince themselves that they’re running against a weak, dumb opponent, and they’re going to get their own back after a long time in the wilderness. They lead in the polls after their convention, and the sureness that they have this one in the bag grows.

Then the Republican candidate blows right past them in his own convention, and they’re shattered. Not just because they’re trailing when they thought they were going to win, but because their ideas and policies have been so effectively exposed and apparently rejected in favor of their opponents’.

Of course, they can’t have been wrong all along–this must be due to Republican dirty tricks! Not fair! Not fair!

We’ll be hearing a lot of that, for a long time I think.