President Bush won 49% of the popular vote in 2000....I dont' think he's done much in the eyes of the 50% that didn't vote for him to swing things very much. The fact that Kerry isn't ahead by 10% or more at this point has to be do to the fact that he's the one kind of candidate--gun grabbing New England liberal--that would fare the worst with Reagan/Yellow Dog/Conservative (a la Zell Miller) Democrats--the folks that any Dem hoping to be elected President is gonna need. Instead, they end up with Kerry, a tough sell even to the 50% that don't like the President. If the Dems had ANYONE who the could have passed off as "centrist", a la Bill Clinton, I think President Bush would be in real trouble.
They don't, though, and that's the reason why President Bush will be re-elected, and why the Dems are screwed in 2008...the 9 dwarfs they ran this year were pitiful, and illustrative of how bad the Democratic party machine is in finding national level candidates these days. Hillary is WAY too devisive to be a viable candidate (imho, anyway), so they've got to try to come with someone else. At this point, they've got a pretty shallow gene pool to choose from lol.