When the national media is saying you're finished because you're now tied in the polls with the incumbent President rather than leading by 3-5 points, what do you do? Take a road trip.

Today, all of the major media outlets are buying into the strange notion that Kerry is losing this campaign because President Bush is getting a boost from his convention (what a shocker). Most have not hammered the President for his dubious claim that the country cannot win the War on Terror (imagine the reaction had Kerry said the same thing), but mysteriously they were easily duped by the Swiftvets obvious lies. In the aggregate, the media's conventional wisdom holds that Kerry has had the worst month of August since Mike Dukakis (though to me the fact that Kerry's still tied or ahead in the polls actually bodes well for the Democrat).

When all else has failed and the national outlets refuse to play fair, the best way for a candidate to get his message out to the American people is to have a whistle stop campaign visiting key battleground states, and this is just what John Kerry will do. The AP's Nedra Pickle writes that "hours after George Bush is to accept the Republican Party's nomination for re-election in New York on Thursday night, Democrat John Kerry plans to respond at Ground Zero of the presidential campaign - Ohio." While he tours the Buckeye state for the two days following the Republican National Convention,

Kerry [will also dispatch] his three partners to Midwest battlegrounds that Democrat Al Gore won narrowly in 2000 - Teresa Heinz Kerry to Iowa, John Edwards to Wisconsin and Elizabeth Edwards to Michigan.

The tours come after Kerry kept a low profile at his family's Nantucket home during most of the Republican National Convention, with one notable exception. Kerry plans interrupt his getaway Wednesday to speak to the American Legion in Nashville, Tenn.

The Kerrys and Edwardses also had bus tours coming out of the Democratic National Convention five weeks ago, and the trip resulted in positive coverage in the local newspapers and television that reach swing voters (italics added).

Although it would certainly be preferable for the mainstream national media to give John Kerry fair coverage, the fact is that the Kerry campaign has mastered the art of local appearances to drive up support in key battleground states.

Take my native state of Oregon, for example. Over the course of three days in the middle of this month, Kerry held three rallies throughout the state that drew 8,000 in Medford, 50,000 in Portland, and a few hundred in the small town of Hood River, each of which garnered significant positive coverage in the local news. As a result of this, Kerry is up 11.3% in the state in the latest Zogby battleground poll, and top political analyst Tim Hibbitts has all but predicted a Kerry win in the state.

If you're feeling discouraged right now about the state of the race, remember that there are still two months left in the election and Kerry has a lot more travelling to do around the country. When the dust settles in a couple of weeks, Bush may be up a few points in some national polls, but that's a natural bounce that will in time subside. Even more important, however, is how the candidates fare in the key battleground states. If Kerry is able to work the same magic this week in Ohio he did in Oregon two weeks ago, we'll have one less thing to worry about, and that's a good thing.