The threat of an attack as a consequence of electing Bush the first time around is beneficial to Bush. It basically says, as it's already been pointed out, that the terrorists prefer John Kerry (obviously).
If they don't hit us before the election and Bush is re-elected, it's a disaster for the jihadists. They'll have come up emtpy when it counts the most (when they needed to defeat Bush).
I have a feeling we're about to see their best shot. Let's hope our best can stop them.
That's already happened. More than once.
Their "best shot"--and there were already articles about this in THE USA Today early in the month--would be to attack on Election Day in order to keep the final election tally from being ultimately conclusive. By attempting to "disenfranchise" voters in a significant city in a swing state, they would keep Kerry from conclusively losing, and thereby not only keep the election results open-ended, but attempt to give the Kerry legal team an open door to eventually "revote" in one key state after all the other states were done...this is what some Dems actually wanted in 2000 in Florida...there were weird ideas afloat about having an entire state "re-vote" as if there was any legal grounds for doing so.
Logically speaking, if terrorists picked Election Day it would make more sense for them to do it in the early evening on the West Coast (so as not to convert voters across the nation into a single-issue reason for voting in Bush). On the other hand, if terrorists didn't care about the popular vote tallies but simply wanted to disrupt the election process, it would also be more logical for them to attempt to hit a major city in a major electoral swing state--attempting to keep a large pocket of electoral votes from being able to declare a victor--which would rule out the Left Coast since it's gonna go Kerry.
If I had to pick cities more "at risk" it would be comparably conservative cities in swing states--cities like Orlando or Cincy. Or whatever the most conservative major city in Texas (yes, not a swing state, but the terrorist objective would be to keep a high # of electoral votes out of the final Bush count & also "punish" Bush in his home state). Also, picking a Texas city to hit at night would not effect the outcome of how East Coast voters voted...and in most other states, the majority would have already voted by then.
The terrorists know that the MSM AND the American public is already hyped up for mass media coverage of the Elections. What better way to inflict terror, their goal, than to transform the entire election process & ensuing coverage than to replace the focus on American democracy with anarchy.