The Unnamed Democrat

Long before the first Democratic primary, polls showed George Bush is some trouble. When matched against an "unnamed Democrat," he polled poorly.

Oddly, whenever a named Democrat was polled against Bush, the results showed an easy Bush victory. Well the Democrat running against Bush has a name today, but many in the Democratic party wish he didn't.

Some party officials say that with three new polls showing President Bush more embattled than he has ever been, Mr. Kerry's wisest course would be to take few chances and turn the election into a referendum on a struggling president. "People have won a lot of campaigns by just saying, `It is time for a change,' " said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster.

But other Democrats warn that such a strategy entails risks of its own, banking on the proposition that Americans would be willing to fire an incumbent during war time and replace him with someone they know little about. "I don't think anybody in their right mind is going to run for president on a strategy of `people hate the other guy and that's enough for our guy to win,' " said Douglas Sosnik, the White House political director for President Bill Clinton.

Until now, Mr. Kerry has more often than not displayed a caution that is very much in keeping with his style as a candidate over the past 20 years, particularly when he is not feeling threatened. He reacted mildly to Mr. Bush's speech on Iraq on Monday. And on Wednesday, Mr. Kerry backed away from a heavily criticized proposal to put off accepting his party's nomination at the Democratic convention, a maneuver to delay the imposition of general election spending caps.