Kerry Campaign in Deep Al-Qaqaa

This from the Kerry Spot - I've highlighted my favorite line of the day:

Just heard from a source close to the campaign, tuned in to the conversations at the highest levels.

According to the Bushies, the last few days have seen a huge burst of momentum in their numbers.

They think Bush is ahead by a few points nationally. They expect the next round of tracking polls to show a bit of a bump.

The internal polls show a significant lead in Florida (outside margin of error) and Arkansas is out of play, with a Bill Clinton visit or without. As for most of the other big ones - Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, internal polls show all too close to call.

Michigan is seriously looking like a pickup - Bush and Cheney could be there four times in the last four days.

An exit poll of those who have already voted show Bush ahead by 15 points! [UPDATE: This is ahead 15 points overall, nationwide, not just in Michigan. Obviously, those who have already voted are only a small, small segment of the electorate at large, so one should not read too much into this number. But it is interesting.]

Undecided voters appear to be breaking Bush’s way - some days he has a slight lead, other days it’s right around 50-50. (Note this would be considerably better than the 1/3 calculated that Bush needs here.

Finally, the ammo dump story appears to have left the Kerry campaign deep in al-Qaqaa.

Tommy Franks is going to enter this story and rip Kerry and the New York Times a new one. The Kerry folks are acting like they realized they have botched this story, and want to shift back to domestic topics. Lockhart, Bill Richardson on Imus — when asked about al-QaQaa, they dodge the question and quickly try to bring up other issues.

The campaign is going to avoid the Russian angle and go with the straightforward, “As the facts mount in this story, American people have a choice between believing Kerry-NYTimes-CBS or believing Bush and the Troops.”

This source close to the campaign didn’t say it, but I wonder if the Bush administration wants to deal with Russia in its own manner, and not have whatever diplomatic confrontations are going on behind the scenes complicated by a furious American electorate blaming Russia for hiding Iraq’s weapons and explosives.