Insiders provide campaign outlook at LV convention

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

Former consultant to President Clinton and CNN talk show co-host James Carville said a victory by President Bush on Nov. 2 would be the most stunning political victory he's ever seen.

But former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the Bush-John Kerry race could still go either way and will probably be "one of the closest elections in modern history."

The Democrat who now appears on CNN's "Crossfire" and the former Georgia congressman were at the Las Vegas Hilton on Wednesday speaking, and sometimes debating, before about 1,200 members of the National Association of Convenience Stores who were in town for a four-day convention.

Carville said: "If Bush wins re-election, it will be the chief most impressive victory of my lifetime."

He added that he's never seen an election where the incumbent comes in tied with the challenger in polls, and then wins.

"The dynamic in the country is for change," he said. "If Kerry loses, the Democratic Party has a good chance of breaking up. ... They will lose faith with the Washington-type Democrats."

Although he expects the Massachusetts senator to win, Carville said there will be some key states to keep an eye on Nov. 2.

He said to win the White House, Kerry needs to win New Jersey and Pennsylvania; then win either Ohio or Florida, and if he wins both states he will win the election; Kerry also needs to win either Wisconsin or Iowa, and if loses both he will lose the election.

If the election is still hanging in the balance after the East Coast and Central time zones close their polls, Nevada could be "huge," he said.

Gingrich said if the race is as close as 2000 contest -- "And it could be that close," -- Nevada could be a decisive state.

Both men said that while the issue of putting nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain could sway some voters, the national issues, such as the economy and national security, will probably have more influence over voters.

Gingrich said the closeness of the election, as reported in national polls, is far from what he thought would be the case.

Gingrich said he guessed in April that Bush would cruise to a 58 percent to 42 percent win in the November election. And he was convinced the Democratic nominees for president and vice president -- Kerry and John Edwards -- were too liberal for the country to accept.

But a string of bad news continues to hurt the president, he said.

Problems such as alleged abuse at American-run prisons in Iraq, high oil prices and a weak stock market tend to hurt Bush, he said.

"The president starts to pull ahead and some things happen," Gingrich said, adding that then voters moving toward the Kerry camp pause, because they "don't know if want that either."

But Gingrich said there is a lot of anti-Bush sentiment in the Democratic Party, and often "in American politics being angry at somebody is more powerful than being proud of somebody."

Both men said national security issues including Iraq and the war on terrorism are the biggest issues in the campaign.

Gingrich said that although America is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, the war in Iraq has hurt the president.

"Iraq has hurt when you watch night after night, one American killed, two Americans killed, three Americans killed," he said.

The problem in Iraq, he said, was that the U.S. didn't follow the "Afghanistan model" and put an Iraqi in place to be the face of the interim authority almost immediately after taking over the country.