Florida. Florida is dead even at 48 percent to 48 percent, according to Monday's Zogby poll, an improvement from John Kerry's showing last week, and there are signs that the Democrats' strategy of trying to appeal to younger Cuban Americans is paying dividends. According to a summer poll released by the New Democrat Network, which has launched a massive Latino outreach program, George W. Bush leads among Cuban Americans by a margin of 70 percent to 19 percent, with 11 percent undecided. That sounds pretty good for the incumbent, but it's significantly less than the 82 percent of the vote he captured in 2000.

Florida. Bad news for Floridians this week as yet another storm pounds the erstwhile Sunshine State. Bad news, too, for John Kerry as the Republican chief of the state's Division of Elections announced that Hurricane Ivan could be used as a pretext for putting Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot despite a court order to keep him off. In other bad news, a September 14 Survey USA poll is giving George W. Bush a pretty substantial 51 percent to 45 percent lead. Last but not least, the president seems to have found yet another way to pander to hard-line anti-Castro Cuban exiles: going soft on terrorism.