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Look pretty encouraging from those who bet their real money onto the outcome. Interesting.

One think worth noting is beware of the Kerry bubble. Kerry is riding on a wave of momentum, not unlike the tech stocks of early 2000, people voting for Kerry (buy tech stocks) because everyone is doing it. People ignore why the vote for Kerry (other than he can beat Bush) - sorta like buying tech stocks at 200X earnings, people buy the stocks not because they are cheap or fundamentally sound, but rather it keep on going higher. As long as the national polls for Kerry look good (ahead of Bush or stay competitive), the dims will keep on voting for Kerry regardless.

Now here is the dilemma, much like the collapse of NASDAQ in March 2000, what goes up must come down! The issue is what will collapse the Kerry bubble and when will that happen. Most voters don't know where Kerry stands on issues (people actually think he is a moderate LOL) and the minute that Bush is pulling ahead of the polls is the exact moment dawn on these people who voted for Kerry on beating Bush (but not necessarily on issues). What will they do?

Finally, one has to be very careful on polls. In 1999 (the year before the GOP primary), Bush was ahead of Gore by double digits (an avg of 12-14 pts when Bush announced his candidacy) 0- a period when most voters don't know who Bush is, just know he is a likable guy. Even after the GOP primary (after the poundings by the media, McCain - blah blah), Bush was ahead of Gore by 10-12 pts. So the Bush 44, Kerry 48 or Bush 43, Kerry 51 stuff seems very tame indeed. It won't take much to flip back to Bush 48-51 Kerry 42-44.

If I were the WH Bush campaign team, I'd want the Kerry bubble to continue. Kerry is untested in the primaries by his opponents (look at last nite's debate, nobody come out swing at him and Kerry has long dreadful, droning answers on Iraq, patriot act blah blah).

If Dean is the Amazon dot com of tech stocks, Kerry is more like a Lucent of techs. Amazon peaked in late 1999 when TIME has its CEO as the person of the year (vs the dual magazine covers of Dean in Dec 2003). Lucent was a slow boring company selling boring stuff, dressed up by the momentum folks and only get busted from 70 to single digits in 2000. Should be interesting in the months ahead.