With the news that the GOP has gained momentum, Democrats can’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow. From the New Republic: That awful Pew poll.

John Judis and I have been e-mailing about the alarming Pew poll that came out today. It reflects the same trends captured by that earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, except that the trends are, gulp, even more pronounced. Worse, the folks at Pew have graciously posted their cross-tabs, which makes it nearly impossible to rationalize the lousy results. As John points out, the fact that Democrats’ 15-point advantage among white women last month has turned into a 2-point disadvantage today is incredibly ominous. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as ominous as the erosion in the Democrats’ advantage among Northeasterners: from 26 points to 9. The Northeast is, of course, a region where Democrats are banking on roughly half a dozen pick-ups. That kind of dropoff isn’t going to get the job done. (One bright spot: the Dems’ advantage in the Midwest held steady.)

The only result John and I disagree on is the fallout from the Kerry joke. Nearly 20 percent of independents told Pew that the joke raised doubts in their minds about voting Democratic (versus 36 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of Dems). John thinks that’s a disastrously high number. I think it could be bad news, but it need not be. My feeling is that a good quarter to a third of all independents are basically Republicans. And, if you’ll permit me a little armchair psychologizing, I think people who call themselves independents but are almost certain to vote Republican typically look for a convenient pretext to justify their vote. My guess is that the Kerry joke has provided that pretext, even though the outcome of their vote was never really in doubt.

But who knows? Even if my pretext theory is right, that means 70 or 80 percent of Republican-leaning independents are all relying on the same pretext, which is a lot. Maybe some of those people really would have woken up on Election Day lacking any pretext and voted Democratic. I doubt there would have been many—if Kerry didn’t get them, then the Saddam verdict or the defeat-o-crat slander probably would have—but it’s possible.