Kerry 6, Bush 3

Smackdown, week 9

No bullet point list this week. I've been to busy on work to gather the links over the last week.

This week was pretty easy to score. It wasn't bad for Bush in the way that it has been a couple of weeks back. But the continuing drag on his presidency by the news out of Iraq hasn't helped either. The latest CBS/NY Times poll showing, for the first time, that a plurality of voters now think the Iraq war was a mistake cannot be good news for Bush. As long as the majority of people believed it was justified that support could translate into a few points in Bush's favor regardless of how bad things are going (in fact, when things go bad, Bush's alleged national security strength boosts his ratings). But, when the people start to turn against the war, they start to rate the negative news against the President.

And Kerry has a relatively good week. He has come out strong against the GOP in their attacks on his military record and has made a good showing of turning the dialog into a question of Bush and Cheney's military record. It's the strongest performance by Kerry since the first couple of weeks of the general campaign.

Combine that with the news that Kerry has already reached his fundraising goal of $80 million and this week comes down in Kerry's favor pretty easily.

(Last week's smackdown)