You misunderstood the 1980 analogy (deliberately?).  In 1980, as in 2004, the U.S. was suffering from a weak economy and a crisis in the Middle East (hostages in Iran then, occupying Iraq now).  Many voters were dissatisfied with the incumbent, but didn't know enough about the challenger to trust him.  In Reagan's case, it was because he was viewed as a dangerous extremist; in Kerry's case, because he's seen as weak and indecisive.  Reagan destroyed that perception in the debates and trounced Carter; Kerry has the opportunity to do the same, and, if his speech in Philadelphia on Friday is any indication of how his rhetoric is going to sound for the remainder of the campaign, will probably do so.  See Will Saletan's article in Slate on this topic.  Saletan is a moderate Republican, incidentally; he voted for Bush in 2000, but has no intention of repeating that mistake.
Later,
Alex

Bush = Jimmy Carter
Kerry = Ronald Reagan

The parallels are actually quite strong.  The condition of the country, the foreign policy disasters, the challenger behind in the horserace yet the one-term incumbent doing badly in the polls, etc.

As to EV.com, they include data from all the polls, including blatantly pro-Bush Strategic Vision, and lousy-likely-voter-model Gallup.  I'll stick with Zogby, the one pollster who absolutely nailed the 2000 election, with ARG, Harris, and Rasmussen as reality checks (that is, if Zogby and one of those three fall outside each other's margin of error, then I'll worry that Zogby might have screwed up).  ALL polls underestimate the power of GOTV; between the Democratic Party, ACT, and Moveon, I expect this election to have the highest turnout in at least half a century.
Later,
Alex

But an exhaustive study by Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later found no evidence that a Patriot had disabled the warhead on any Scud missile. "There were three cases where damage was done to the airframe of Scuds, but in all three cases the warheads went on undamaged," said Postol. "So basically there are no cases that we studied--and we had three-quarters of the engagements on film--where we saw evidence of a destruction of the Scud warhead."

Later, William S. Cohen, the Defense secretary under President Clinton, acknowledged that the Gulf War-era Patriot missile "didn't work."

Now Bush is talking about deploying a system that we know doesn't work, as a cheap ploy to win votes from the gullible.  This isn't about what America can and can't do; it's about what we have and haven't done.  We haven't developed the technology to stop a ballistic missile attack on our soil, and pretending that we have does not improve our national security.

Now, just suppose for a moment that that "can-do" American spirit (the same one that's brought us the cures for cancer and HIV?) and the ingenuity of our scientists and engineers eventually produces a system that can stop ballistic missiles from striking us with 100% reliability.  Would that make us any safer?  Of course not, because a ballistic missile is not the only way of delivering a nuclear warhead.  It's not even a likely way today, since the only people likely to nuke the U.S. are terrorists who don't have access to ICBMs.  They do, however, have access to equally effective delivery systems; they're called "suitcases" and "shipping crates."  Guess what: Kim Jong Il has access to those devices too!  I think that the 100 billion we've already spent, plus the 50 billion Bush wants to spend over the next five years, is a bit much to pay for a false sense of security.

One more point, about that "great step towards peace."  There are currently three countries that have some likelyhood of attacking the U.S. with nuclear-tipped ICBMs: Russia, China, and North Korea.  Currently, all three of those countries are deterred from doing so by the certainty of a U.S. counterstrike.  Now, look at it from their point of view: as far as they're concerned, WE are deterred from attacking THEM by the threat of THEIR counterstrike capability.  If you don't believe that any of the leaders of those three nations are paranoid enough to worry about the possibility of a U.S. first strike on them, you REALLY need to get out more.  Now, suppose one of those paranoid leaders (say Kim Jong Il, as he's probably the least stable of the lot) sees the U.S. deploying a system that would eliminate his counterstrike capability and allow us to destroy his country with impunity.  Might he be just paranoid enough to launch an attack on us before we got the system deployed?  I wouldn't want to bet a million American lives that he wouldn't.
Later,
Alex

Bush's entire re-election campaign has been based on an "anyone but Kerry" thrust.  The whole idea of his blatantly misleading and distorting caricatures of Kerry has been to paint Kerry in such a bad light that even a failed president would look better.  Bush has ignored his own record in total, intead doing anything and everything to cast Kerry as the one everyone must avoid.