Mark Steyn has a current snapshot. It's not a pretty picture:

...‘Kerry is a good closer,’ say his pals, which is their explanation for the way he struggles through the campaign and then wins narrowly even in the one-party state of Massachusetts....

...In normal circumstances, you’d send the vice-presidential nominee out to serve as your attack dog and savage your detractors. But because Kerry is aloof and cold, he chose a running mate to supply all the warmth and charm and feel-good fluffiness he himself lacks. Whatever John Edwards’s strengths, he’s no attack dog. While Dick Cheney went around the country snarling devastating cracks about Senator Flip-Flop, Edwards was reduced to pleading for Bush to call off the SwiftVet ads. He looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

There is an attack dog on the Kerry team. Unfortunately, it’s his wife, and folks don’t like that in a prospective First Lady. Teresa Heinz Kerry dismisses her husband’s critics as ‘idiots’ and ‘scumbags’, and Kerry’s new advisers seem eager to limit her visibility. I’ve lost count of the number of Democrat women who’ve said to me that they can’t stand her.

So that was the state of play in mid-September: a candidate in hiding, a lightweight running-mate way out of his league, and a motor-mouth wife duct-taped and tossed into the cellar...

...just in time for the change of policy, comes a new ad from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth focusing on another cheery snapshot from the John Kerry scrapbook of 35 years ago. This one is about Kerry’s trip to Paris to meet negotiators from the North Vietnamese communist government and the south’s Provisional Revolutionary government. He was a Naval Reserve officer at the time, and many of my correspondents regard it as treason. I’m not in favour of having Senator Kerry put on trial and executed; soccer moms and other swing voters may see that as over-reaching. But John O’Neill, the Swiftees’ spokesman, says, ‘It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al-Qa’eda.’ Even if that line doesn’t catch on, the ad is nicely timed with Kerry’s Iraqi withdrawal strategy to paint the senator as the candidate of American defeatism, then and now.

I don’t think there’s a majority for that position in the country or in any of the battleground states. But, if you’re John Kerry’s campaign staff, what else is there? The Boston Globe had a story this week with the sub-headline: ‘Advisors Strategize To Boost His “Likability”.’ Good luck with that one.

Registration required, but RTWT.

With regard to Senator Kerry being a "good closer," I heard Donna Brazile say the other day something like "he runs better from behind, like Seabiscuit."

The senator may look a little like Seabiscuit, at least in his facial features, but I don't think he runs like him.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of resembling animals, did you hear Kerry's speeches yesterday? He must have a bad cold. He not only looks like a Frog, but yesterday, he sounded like one.

Ah, the joys of the Web:-) I refer specifically to http://bugmenot.com/, which allows one to enter the URL of a website that requires registration and then gives out a username and password for that site. No registration required!

Amen!