From The Hill: "If two judgments have become conventional wisdom about the 2004 presidential campaign, they are these: That President Bush has had a very bad few months and that because he is doing so poorly, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) should be doing much better than he is.

Those coupled judgments have led Republicans — and more than a few Democrats — to conclude that Kerry must be an exceptionally weak candidate or is running an extremely inept campaign.

Democrats, meanwhile, keep asking why Kerry hasn’t taken the opportunity of the descent to war in Iraq and the unfolding prisoner-abuse scandal to make the case against the president’s mismanagement of Iraq and foreign affairs generally.

But step back for a moment and you’ll see that this is a flawed view of the current state of the campaign and probably represents bad advice for Kerry." Read the whole thing.