Iowa Electronic Market, 8/1/96
	Vote Share			Winner-Takes-All
	Dole	Clinton		Dole	Clinton
Open	43.2%	55.6%		28.3%	69.8%
Close	43.2%	53.4%		27.0%	72.6%
Pundits' Index
Clinton: 82 percent, down 1 from last week Dole: 17 percent, up 1 from last week Perot: 1 percent, unchanged (at 1)

1) Bob Dole trails Bill Clinton 52-28 in the polls just two weeks before the Republican convention. 2) His stock has sunk below 31 cents in the Iowa market. 3) The pundits agree that things can't get worse for Dole. That combination plus a few flashes of competence equals a point for Dole in the pundits' index.

But it's only a correction, a meager one. Dole's target price--the ceiling above which investors will no longer buy his shares--has fallen considerably. The market thinks he can gain ground but can't win. Even right-leaners are openly comparing this election to Reagan-Mondale '84, in which the incumbent's lead "never closed." The pundits not only view everything Dole does (tax cuts, drug-bashing, etc.) as insincere "desperation" politics, but also infer that the voters will see it that way, too.

The bombings: Wall Street reduces human tragedies to money; the pundits reduce them to politics. Clinton's political stock ballooned in the aftermath of the TWA and Atlanta explosions (Howard Fineman anointed him "a terrific griever in chief"), while Dole stalled in an awkward position. (Tony Snow wondered: "Should he be out trying to do public grief, or does he just sort of suck it up and let the president get credit?")

Welfare: With Ron Brownstein leading the pack, the pundits pondered 1) whether Clinton would sign or veto the GOP welfare-reform bill and 2) which option would give him less political trouble. The bill's opponents implied that Clinton could rally his base with a veto; the bill's advocates argued that a veto would infuriate swing voters, and anyway, "liberals have nowhere else to go."

Tax cut: Dole's scheme to define his candidacy around a big tax-cut plan faces steep market resistance. The pundits regard Dole as a lifelong deficit hawk who's "been dragged into the tax cut" by the supply-siders he's always despised. The New York Times called him "a man in an argument with himself."

Clinton lite: The op-ed pages and chat shows frothed with contempt for what Maureen Dowd called Clinton's "teensy-weensy pronouncements on truancy, school uniforms, curfews, and deadbeat dads." The pundits agreed that it's working because it gives the press a prepackaged issue-of-the-day to cover. "Compared to what Bob Dole is talking about on the stump, [Clinton's ideas] are remarkably specific," cracked the Times ' Todd Purdum.

The age issue: The pundits agree that he's only making the age gap more conspicuous by boasting of his long service. Worst of all, Dole spent his 73rd birthday party "visiting with senior citizens," snickered Gordon Peterson. "You have to wonder who planned that one."

GOP convention: Veep talk careened from Bill Bennett to Sen. John McCain to former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell. And the applause for Dole's recruitment of convention speakers Colin Powell and Susan Molinari faded; George Will scoffed that they won't "make a particle of difference." Meanwhile, fears of a Buchanan blowup are growing: Bill Kristol suggested that Dole could end up mired in a four-way race with Buchanan (on the ballot in 40 states, courtesy of the right-wing U.S. Taxpayers Party) and Perot.

Bob-stabbing: Chatter about "buyer's remorse" in the GOP persists, with tales of Republicans exchanging faxes about a Dole ouster at the convention. The market firmly dismisses such scenarios but is dismayed by congressional Republicans' desertion of Dole. The latest twist on this gossip is that GOP officeholders are now rationalizing that a second Clinton term is good for the GOP in the long run because it will further alienate the electorate.

--William Saletan

William Saletan covers politics for several magazines and is the author of a forthcoming book on the politics of abortion.