As Noam Scheiber states in his blog at TNR:
"But what I think everyone is overlooking here is the degree to which cultural issues and national security credibility are connected (Ed probably wouldn't disagree with me on this point). In my mind, the most important question swing voters asked themselves when deciding whom to vote for was, "which guy is going to keep me safe." But, in answering this question, they didn't think through the details of how Iraq was going, or how much loose nuclear material the administration had secured, or even how many members of Al Qaeda we've rolled up in the last three years. What they thought about was "which candidate do I trust more: my plain-talking, brush-clearing, evil-denouncing commander-in-chief, or this windsurfing, pate-eating, well-coiffed guy from Massachusetts." Obviously, the answer to that question wasn't very close."
So while BC/04 went to specific states, the propaganda to elect Bush was on the national news every single day. Small but illustrative example: Tom Ridge's blatant use of Terror Warnings and other announcements concerning terrorism were implicit and at times explicit propaganda to elect Bush.
Kerry/Edwards and the DNC needed to run a national campaign to counter it. They did not.
