Bad moon rising

One line I read in some book said there are seven things that can happen when a quarterback drops back to throw a pass, and six of them are bad -- the good one is that the pass is accurately thrown and successfully caught; the bad ones are quarterback sack, interception, quarterback injury, receiver injury, incomplete pass, and fumbled catch.
Anyway, I was reminded of this in relation to the stories I am reading now about Bush's campaign -- Slate's article about the pseudo-religious persona that Bush is using on his campaign stops had an aura of desperation about it in spite of the reporter's own warm fuzzies. Note the description of his audience as "hand-picked Ohioans intended to represent a particular Bush policy". Both Bush and Cheney now seem to prefer to speak only to the previously converted -- and these will become fewer in number as a cascade of bad things happens in the next three months:
- the Afghan election Oct. 9 will likely be a mess.
- the Iraq insurgency will continue to get worse. By the end of October, there will be 1,200 American troops dead.
- US job numbers will continue to tank, the market will continue to fall. The market usually falls anyway from mid-September to the end of October. This year will be worse because of oil prices.
- the Plame inquiry will report and, considering how many of top Bush administration people they have interviewed, its unlikely (though possible, I suppose) that the result will be innocuous.
- chances are that more prisoner abuse photos will emerge.
- and if there is a terrorist attack on US property anywhere in the world, it may not turn out to be a positive for Bush. In fact, it could be a negative, particularly if it concerns some area like chemical plants, about which the Bush administration has been warned but has done nothing to fix (and considering how much has been neglected, the odds are that this will be the case.)
Now, Kerry could blow it somehow, and he will need to present himself well in the debates. We'll have a better idea after the Republican convention how their speaking styles will compare.
But for the most part, the indicators for Bush are pretty bad.
Clinton said in last night's CBC interview that Bush had already lost, and this is certainly the sense I get when I see news coverage of his campaign appearances -- though most of the media are still trying to be "balanced" about it.