And Bush will win California! - Here comes the counter-intuition

Sure as the sun rises in the east, the blogosphere churns out attention-grabbers to insist that the conventional wisdom is wrong and, whatever the proposition, the exact opposite is true.

Thus, today we see the esteemed Andrew Sullivan succumb to the “Kerry landslide” meme, with arched eyebrow, murmuring “It could happen!” Suddenly, everything you knew (or thought you knew!) is wrong. Or not.

A little history: sixteen years ago, in May 1988, a dour, unlikable, Massachusetts politician was beating George Bush in the polls by double digits. Here’s how ex-president Richard Nixon perceived the future (from a Sept. 2000 Newsmax story):

In May 1988 when Vice President George Bush trailed Gov. Michael Dukakis by 16 points in the polls, Richard Nixon told me, "Bush will win – third term Reagan – but he will lose in 1992; the economy will beat him."

Three years later, in 1991, the day after Desert Storm ended, I asked Nixon whether he still kept to his prediction that the now-President Bush would lose the next year. After all, I pointed out, his approval ratings were close to 90 percent. Nixon repeated his prophecy: "Bush will lose – the economy."

Thus, for Bush Senior, the military issue could not help him. By the same coin, the military issue will not hurt Dubya in November. Between mounting casualties and the prisoner scandal, April was probably the worst month for the Iraq coalition since the war began. Yet the latest RCP average for the election indicate that President Bush is steady and holding a 3% lead over Kerry. (Thus, he’s in a significantly better position six months before the election than his father was when he won in 1988). In fact, there’s a strong argument that Bush’s support can only go up - it’s the economy stupid. From “Economy, incumbency favor Bush”, here’s the estimation of Yale economist Ray Fair who has fine-tuned an equation to determine the popular vote of presidential elections:

Over the past 10 elections, the model has accomplished that task [estimating the popular vote] within 2.6 percentage points on average, and in the past two elections the formula has been accurate to within about 1.2 percentage points.

Based on Fair's relatively conservative economic forecast — a 2.4 percent GDP growth rate — Bush is likely to win 58 percent of the 2004 popular vote not including any third-party votes — a landslide over whoever wins the Democratic nomination.

Just last week, Ray Fair updated his prediction based on recent economic data:

The main message that the equation has been making from the beginning is thus not changed, namely that President Bush is predicted to win by a sizable margin.

By midsummer, with the economy gaining steam and troops heading back from Iraq after June 30th, things are going to start looking more desperate for John Kerry. He will need to somehow convince Americans to invite him into their living rooms for four years. Once again, there seems to be very little chance of that happening – from “Kerry’s Conundrum” on Reason:

To a large degree—and we might as well admit it, to a disturbingly large degree—the battle for the White House may well come down to a personality contest. And that's a contest Kerry will lose, probably badly. Despite the hatred he inspires among the shrinking rolls of the American left and some traditional Democrats, Bush is generally seen as a decent, get-along guy. Not so Kerry.

And lest you think I’m cocooning myself with conservative-leaning arguments, here’s the Village Voice and The Nation, both wondering just what the hell Kerry stands for.

In sum, the evidence so far suggests a future a galaxy away from the ABB-fueled pipe dream of a Kerry landslide.