With no surrogate -- and no vice presidential nominee yet -- to help him, Kerry has been forced to defend himself on everything from his war record to the kind of cars his family owns. The process has left him looking petty at times, equivocal at others, and it has turned so many issues -- particularly the question of service in Vietnam -- into he-said, she-said disputes. Rather than stressing that Kerry served admirably in combat in Vietnam while Cheney obtained five deferments and Bush did or didn't show up for National Guard duty stateside, U.S. News and World Report ran a cover last week showing Kerry in a suit, Bush in a uniform, and identifying 1971 as a "defining year" in both of their lives. Coverage of the Vietnam service spat has transformed the issue into a tie, and that's a victory for Bush.

And amid all of the sweating in the media over the small stuff, like SUVs and Botox -- not to mention the Times' important and exhaustive study of Kerry's so-called butler, actually an aide who, the Times tells us, makes PB&Js for the presumptive Democratic nominee -- voters continue to say that they don't really know who Kerry is or what he stands for. Kerry acknowledged as much in early April, but his campaign has done little to improve the situation.

That may change this week, as the Kerry campaign launches $27.5 million worth of television ads designed to introduce the candidate to the voters in traditional swing states and even in a couple of red states Democrats think they have a shot at flipping. It's exactly the sort of approach that many Democrats believe Kerry needs to be taking -- and soon. "Kerry is now going to need to define himself and the race on his terms more effectively than he has," Maslin said.

Although Bush had a bad month in April, he also had the month more or less to himself. Kerry spent much of the month raising money, while the Bush campaign has spent some $60 million on advertising of its own -- just to stay even in the national polls. Former Clinton strategist Doug Schoen says that's a sign of Bush's vulnerability. "Between Kerry having been on vacation and not being on the air as much as Bush, it's good news that, at this time, the polls show that the race is tied," Schoen told Salon. "Bush is anchored by only one thing -- national security and terrorism. His rankings on the economy and the war are negative, and he's in a much weaker position than the overall numbers indicate."

Maslin agrees, saying that the "fundamentals" of the race still favor Kerry. "The fundamentals are that the country's a mess, and Bush's argument is that it's such a mess that you've got to stick with me," Maslin said. The Republicans "don't have a story to tell, so they're left scaring everybody to death about Kerry. I'm not saying that they're not having some impact, but 'some impact' is the best they can say." With approval ratings under 50 percent, Maslin said, Bush is in "a danger zone for an incumbent."

The key for the Kerry campaign is to make sure that Kerry meets some "threshold" of acceptability in voters' minds, strategists say. He doesn't have to come across as the greatest candidate ever, they say, but simply as a credible and viable alternative to Bush -- particularly if another terrorist attack on U.S. soil throws the race further up in the air.

The White House knows that the "threshold" question is critical for Kerry, and that's why it can't concede even what appears to be a sure loser of an argument -- say, the Vietnam service question -- to Kerry. If Kerry can stand as a war hero, he may meet the threshold. If Bush and Cheney and Rove can muddy up his record and cast him as something less than honest, even about something as trivial as whose medals or ribbons he might have thrown one day in protest, then the threshold becomes harder to reach.

Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, says it's possible that the Bush-Cheney attacks on Kerry's war-hero status may be driving down Kerry's numbers in states that are safely Republican but may not be helping Bush in swing states. "It looked like Bush was making some headway in the battleground states at the end of March, but in April things may have gone the other way," he said.

Presidential elections don't turn on the national vote -- just ask President Al Gore -- and Teixeira said that polling from critical swing states is so sporadic and inconsistent that it's hard to make solid predictions about Electoral College numbers. But like many other Democrats, he says any panic about Kerry's prospects is "way too much, way too soon."

"We're six months away from the election," Teixeira said. "People think that just because Bush got a lot of bad news, Kerry should be 10 points ahead. I think they're kidding themselves."

Kerry has made mistakes, Teixeira said, and he'll have to start performing better. But beating Bush is "quote, doable," he said, and Kerry can do it. "It's a fair statement that Kerry is going to have to run a good campaign to beat him, but it's far too early to conclude he's incapable of doing it."

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