WASHNGTON - If the 2004 election were today, polls suggest that President Bush probably would lose. But the election isn't until November.

Today Democrats are energized and optimistic in ways unfathomable just weeks ago. Driven by their loathing for Bush, they're turning out for primary elections in record numbers and seem ready to rally with unusual unity behind Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Their attacks on Bush - rather than on one another - dominate their presidential-candidate debates and the news.

Now Iraq looks more like a quagmire with no good end in sight.

Bush, meanwhile, has hit a rough patch. The former chief weapons inspector in Iraq says U.S. intelligence was wrong about nearly everything in Iraq and that Iraq probably didn't have weapons of mass destruction. January was the second deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq since the president declared major combat over last May. Forty Americans died, along with hundreds of Iraqis.

The economy remains 3 million jobs down from when Bush took office; Friday's report of 112,000 new jobs in January was short of expectations. And the president's record budget deficits and soaring debt have even some conservatives shaking their heads.

The result: Five new polls show Bush losing a general election match-up with Kerry. While the general election ISN'T today, this is the first time an incumbent has entered an election year in such shape since Gerald Ford in 1976. He went on to lose a close race to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

"The race is quickly coming down to a two-person race," said Terry Holt, the chief spokesman for Bush's re-election campaign, adding that the president always expected a tough race. "As that happens, we expect this will be a very close contest."

Former Democratic Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, whose state holds its presidential caucuses Sunday, said his party was stronger against Bush than it was just months ago. Then, Bush was riding high with the capture of Saddam Hussein, the economy gaining steam and the Democrats leaning toward former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose fervent opposition to the Iraq war and support for broad tax increases had some Republicans dreaming of a landslide that would give them the White House and even more control of Congress.

Now Iraq looks more like a quagmire with no good end in sight, and Kerry looks like a much more formidable opponent than Dean did.

But Mitchell cautioned against assuming the Democrats will hold their strong position straight through to November.

"There will be ups and downs," said Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader.

For now, the Democrats are up.

They're surging to caucuses and primaries in record numbers. In South Carolina, for example, 290,000 voted in last week's primary, triple the number who voted in 2000.

That doesn't guarantee Democrats November success in those states. South Carolina Republicans note that this year's Democratic turnout was far short of the 500,000 Republicans who voted in their 2000 primary.

But it does signal energy and enthusiasm.

"It's a sign of strength," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who's working for Kerry. "It bespeaks the strong desire by Democrats to get rid of George Bush. ... In 2000, there was complacency and resignation."

Perhaps more importantly, many Democrats seem ready to unify behind the candidate the moment the nomination is settled. In South Carolina, for example, 80 percent of those voting last Tuesday said they would be happy if Kerry won the nomination. That was in a state he lost to Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

A key reason is that there's no significant ideological difference among the major candidates: Kerry, Edwards and retired Army. Gen. Wesley Clark. Democratic voters already have weaned out or marginalized the most liberal and conservative candidates.

In addition, fear of voter backlash at negative campaign tactics - and a new law requiring candidates to put their own faces on all ads - has driven the Democrats to focus more on attacking Bush than one another.

At the same time, Bush has problems:

• The administration's plan to hand political power back to Iraqis by July 1 - well before the presidential campaign heats up in the fall - is in shambles.
  
• The report from former weapons inspector David Kay that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq raised new questions about the president's primary argument for invading.
  
• The economy, while growing, isn't yet creating jobs at a robust rate.
  
• Bush's budget deficit is now a record half-trillion dollars.

The sharp rise in federal spending over his term, including nondefense spending, is drawing complaints from conservatives. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said recently that Bush had allowed spending to rise faster than President Clinton had and he "makes conservative voters feel taken for granted."

That could become a problem in a close election if, as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas said recently, conservatives "throw up their hands and say, `Hey, there's not a nickel's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats; I'm just going to sit this election out.'"

Bush re-election spokesman Holt insisted that the conservative base will enthusiastically support the president, adding that it will become more energized as it focuses on the choice between Bush and the Democratic nominee.

Bush will need a solid base, particularly given his recent standing in public opinion polls. His approval rating has dropped to 49 percent in the Gallup Poll, the lowest since he took office. Moreover, five national polls show he would lose to Kerry if the election were today, by margins ranging from 1 to 8 percentage points.

Even the one poll showing Bush winning over Kerry, from Fox News, showed the president's margin slipping from 22 percentage points to 7 in just two weeks.

If substantive issues such as Iraq, the economy and the deficit fuel some of these trends, so does partisan message. And Bush has been getting much less of a bounce in public opinion from recent events. His approval ratings jumped in the run-up to the Iraq war last spring, and again after Saddam was captured in December. But each bounce was smaller and disappeared more quickly than the last. Unusually, the president got virtually no bounce in the polls from his State of the Union address, delivered the day after Kerry's win in Iowa.

At the same time, the Democrats' ability to dominate political news with attacks on Bush allowed them to get a rare bounce in primary season, similar to the one each party gets during its national convention.

In response, Bush has been trying to muscle in on the Democrats' message, traveling to New Hampshire and South Carolina to remind voters of his own message shortly after each state voted in Democratic contests. On Sunday, he'll appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" in a taped hour-long interview. On Monday, he'll go to Missouri, which Kerry won last Tuesday and which is expected to be a battleground state in November.

Said Holt: "They have had their moment onstage. This is a marathon, not a sprint."

Copyright 2004 Knight-Ridder

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