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I could not agree more:

If the President wants to stem the bleeding, he's going to have to remake the case over the war with Iraq.

But dales, that fundamentally contradicts your Hanson quote, which you also seem to approve of:

If White House politicos figured that many who were angered . . . would grumble, but not abandon Mr. Bush . . . then they were absolutely right.

If people are going to grumble and vote Bush anyway, then he doesn't need to re-make the case for Iraq. But I think Hanson's wrong and you are right because it's WEAK-GOP or GOP-LEANING independents who most need to hear the case re-made because of feeling betrayed by the Iraq justifications. Hanson assumes that anyone who supported Bush on Iraq will behave like a base-GOP voter. That's wrong. Trust me, I oughtta know. I know one lib Dem who supported Bush on Iraq pretty strongly.

:^{)

That notion of betrayal that you posit is extremely important: It's asymmetric and one-way. You can go from mildly critical to strongly supportive or vice versa and you can move to adjacent categories in either direction multiple times, but you NEVER go back to "strongly approve" after you've once abandoned that for "strongly disapprove" because you feel betrayed. IOW, 9 months ago there was less than 20% of the vote that Bush was never going to get. Now there's almost 30%.

The FL polls are amusing, but it will be comfortably Bush by November. Still, having to fight for it is an ominous sign for Bush. And he could still lose it--did you note the partisan splits in the ARG polls? Kerry's losing only 6% of Dems to Bush, who's losing only 8% of Repubs to Kerry. Amazing. I've literally never seen splits like that. Usually, when one candidate has his base that solid, he's already poaching big-time from the opposition's base. Under 10% erosion is not uncommon for a strong candidate against a weaker candidate, but UNPRECEDENTED for both candidates.

But dales, that fundamentally contradicts your Hanson quote, which you also seem to approve of

No, it does not. The former deals with the public in totality; the latter deals with the conservative/Republican base. Frankly, I had expected to see some evidence of the latter weakening, attributable to spending concerns. That evidence is not there, though. I buy into VDH's analysis. Conservative Republicans understand that despite their concerns, the foreign policy and defense positions of Kerry would be a disaster. They are staying put.

As for who it is that does need the case to be made, they are definitely 'in play' voters. I would tend to think that since they moved so noticeably during the Democrat nominating process, when a good portion of the middle is not really paying attention to a significant degree, tells me that these are people not tending to lean GOP, but rather to lean Democrat.

I'd rather you be right that they were the weak GOP or lean GOP types. It would be easier to recapture them.

did you note the partisan splits in the ARG polls? Kerry's losing only 6% of Dems to Bush, who's losing only 8% of Repubs to Kerry. Amazing.

Yes, I did. On one level, it makes sense due to the fact that the poll was taken the day after Kerry sewed up the nomination and Edwards dropped out. You would expect the Democrats polled to be unified at such a time. On another, it made me skeptical of the poll as no other Florida poll shows Bush getting only slightly more than 90% of Republicans-- neither of the other two polls released last week in Florida (including the other taken on the exact same days) showed this weakness.

Still, I revised my call and moved Florida to slight advantage for Kerry.

Oh, and I strongly disagree with this:

You can go from mildly critical to strongly supportive or vice versa and you can move to adjacent categories in either direction multiple times, but you NEVER go back to "strongly approve" after you've once abandoned that for "strongly disapprove" because you feel betrayed.

To the contrary, voters who make that swing tend to be the kind who are demonstrative and see things in black and white, but can change their minds. When they do, they don't find the middle. If they decide that there was a good reason to take out the brutal, murderous, oil-for-food-dollar-skimming war criminal Saddam Hussein, a good portion of them will decide that they were right to support his foreign policy originally and wrong to change their minds about it.