Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) finds himself in a familiar predicament. He is engaged in a battle that by all accounts he should be winning — and yet he's losing. Kerry and countless others confronted this situation three decades ago in Vietnam, and he's in it again right now in his race for the presidency.

Despite poor economic conditions throughout the country that create an opening against the incumbent president, Bush now leads Kerry by 13 points nationwide according to a Sept. 13-15 Gallup poll of likely voters. The outlook doesn't get much brighter in battleground states in which Kerry must capitalize.

Let's look at the battleground state of Ohio. I prefer to focus on Ohio because — unlike the den of inequity and filth that is Wisconsin — it has 20 electoral votes and has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1964. People like to dress us Wisconsin as a battleground state but — barring a complete Kerry implosion — its meager 10 electoral votes (the equivalent of two Wyomings and an Idaho) can be cautiously called for Kerry.

In this Ohio, Bush has an eight-point lead over Kerry according to the most recent Gallup poll. This is interesting because Ohio has lost 230,000 jobs since the dawn of the Bush presidency, and according to a Sept. 4-7 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll 39 percent of registered voters rated the economy as their top priority (beating out terrorism, which came in second in the poll, at 24 percent). The same poll showed that 51 percent of respondents favored Kerry to better handle the economy, compared with 43 percent favoring Bush.

Yet Bush has the lead. What's the reason for this? The answer may lie in the fact that Kerry has not successfully defined himself as a candidate. According to a Sept. 19 Cleveland Plain Dealer story by Mark Naymik entitled "Bush lead growing in Ohio," Kerry's main source of support comes from people who dislike Bush — not from people who are particularly enamored with Kerry.

For Bush, the case is the opposite. Most of his supporters believe in his "character" and "integrity." Whether Bush even has those things is a topic for a whole other column, but the point is clear: People feel they know who Bush is. When it comes to Kerry, even his die-hard supporters know little else than the mantra of "Anybody But Bush."

In political campaigns — like in Vietnam — it's hard to pinpoint when difficulties morph into the specter of certain defeat. In Vietnam, the vastly superior force of America should have prevailed, but it didn't. In this election, conditions seem ripe for a Kerry victory. A poor economy and an incumbent who is seen as weak on economic issues should pave the way for a Kerry landslide. But it isn't happening. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but Kerry had better take action to shape his destiny — and his image — soon. If he doesn't, he will soon find himself in an insoluble quagmire — again.

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