Recent polls show Bush ahead of Kerry by 9 points (CBS-NYT), 6 points (Gallup) or 3 points (Zogby). One Pew poll even put Bush ahead of Kerry by 16 points. The average of national polls has Bush 6 points ahead. Apparently, just like in Vietnam, it's taken Kerry only four months to piss off everyone around him.

The polls for Kerry are so bad that Al Hunt and Michael Moore are starting to yelp, "The polls mean nothing! Ignore the polls!" The only polls liberals ever considered "unimpeachable" were the ones that showed high approval ratings for Clinton during his impeachment ? who never got a 50 percent approval rating from Americans in an actual election.

Soon Democrats will be wheeling out the old chestnut about the only poll that counts being the one they take on Dec. 2 (or whenever they finish the recount demanded by Democrats after Kerry's loss).

Another bad augury for Kerry is that only 40 percent of his supporters in the New York Times-CBS poll like him. Nearly as many say they are supporting him simply because they dislike Bush. By contrast, 80 percent of Bush supporters like their candidate, and only 9 percent say they support him because they dislike Kerry.

Most inauspicious, just weeks before the election, Kerry is still trying to shore up the black vote. Poor Kerry can't even count on my gender in this election: Bush leads Kerry among women voters 48 percent to 43 percent (NYT-CBS). In 1980, Ronald Reagan split the women's vote with Carter and still whipped him. This year, Bush has a 5-point lead with the weaker sex.

In addition to major swings through black churches and the "Dr. Phil" TV show, Kerry is still trying to win the confidence of Moveon.org loonies. Last week, Kerry gave a speech at New York University ? the site of some of Al Gore's nuttier pronouncements about Bush ? to denounce "Halliburton."

Amid a solid stream of bad news, the New York Times reported on its own poll ? showing Kerry 8 points behind Bush ? in an article titled: "Bush Opens Lead Despite Unease Voiced in Survey." The Times bases its "unease" conclusion on some secret documents recently given to them by Bill Burkett. This would seem to go against the 80 percent likeability rating among Bush supporters I cited previously ? but hey, it's good to see Jayson Blair working again.

In fact, the only "unease" expressed by voters in the Times poll seems to center on the possibility that Kerry could be elected president. Sixty percent of respondents to the Times poll said they do not have confidence that Kerry could deal wisely with an international crisis. Only 26 percent of respondents said they had "a lot" of confidence in Kerry's ability to stop another terrorist attack, compared to 51 percent who have a lot of confidence in Bush's ability to do so.

How about that for the next Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker? "Three-quarters of us don't trust him on terror, but only 60 percent of us think he'd be incompetent in any international crisis."

And yet Times reporters Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder reasoned "there are signs that the election remains competitive ..." Most of these "signs" can be found posted on the Bushlied.com website. Continued...