Gary Langer, ABC News polling director, has a very good article up on the ABC News website about the silly idea that "NASCAR dads" will be the swing vote that decides the 2004 election. Langer points out that the definitions of NASCAR dad vary wildly and--the fatal flaw--tend not to be swing voters, no matter what the definition. Here's what he came up with when he took the typical characteristics commentators have attached to this group and actually ran the numbers (!)

When we run data from our recent polls we find that married, middle- and lower-income white men account for a single-digit share of the national population, and support President Bush in precisely the same proportion as all white men. (Make it rural white men, and it goes down to low single digits.) And white men, particularly Southern white men, are a solidly Republican group, highly unlikely to swing anywhere, anyhow.

For good measure, we checked rural, suburban or small city married white men with children and incomes under $50,000 in the 2000 exit poll. They accounted for 2 percent of all voters, and supported Bush over Gore by 70 percent to 27 percent. You really want to call this a swing voter group?

Not over here in DR-land, Gary, we know better! And just to stick a fork in this one, here's what DR's favorite nonpartisan analyst, Charlie Cook, had to say on the subject:

But this business about the "NASCAR dad" being the swing voter group of the 2004 election, or any other national election, is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in my 32 years in and around politics. In NASCAR fans, we are talking about an overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male and Southern electorate. It's also disproportionately working- and middle-class, and in the 30-39 year age bracket, the age group where Bush is strongest.

Don't get me wrong -- these are terrific, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth type people. But any group that is disproportionately white, male, Southern, working- and middle-class 30-somethings is not made up of swing voters.

You tell 'em, Charlie! So: who are the real swing voters? Back to Langer, whose simple definition is a thing of beauty.

In our view, a swing voter group ought to fit two basic criteria — its majority vote ought to swing between Democratic and Republican candidates from election to election; and it ought to be big enough to make a difference in the outcome.

Exactly. And one of the groups that fits this definition quite crisply is an old DR favorite: independent voters. Rather than wasting our time trying to figure out how to reach NASCAR dads, let's try to figure out where independent voters are coming from this year.

Fortunately, that isn't so difficult. We can just ask 'em. According to a just-released CBS News poll, independents give Bush a 46 percent overall approval rating, a 45 percent approval rating on foreign policy, a 46 percent approval rating on Iraq and a 40 percent rating on the economy. They think the country's off on the wrong track by 55 percent to 37 percent and they give Bush only a 41 percent favorability rating. By 52 percent to 40 percent, they don't think Bush has the same priorities for the country that they do.

They favor a generic Democratic presidential candidate over Bush by 48 percent to 38 percent and they also prefer John Kerry over Bush by the same margin.

By 53 percent to 42 percent, they're uneasy about whether Bush can make the right decisions on the nation's economy. About three-quarters think Bush administration policies have either decreased the number of jobs or had no effect and three-quarters also think his policies have either made their taxes go up or had no effect on their taxes.

In terms of foreign policy, 51 percent think Bush is "war president" because of the choices he made, not because world events caused him to be one (38 percent). By 52 percent to 39 percent they don't think the result of the war with Iraq has been worth the loss of life and other costs. In addition, 62 percent believe that either that Iraq was a threat the could have been contained or that it was not a threat and 61 percent believe the Bush administration either hid important elements or mostly lied about what they knew about Iraq's WMD.

Sounds promising. They're (a) real swing voters and (b) accessible to the Democrats in multiple and important ways. Who needs fake swing groups like NASCAR dads when you've got these kind of voters to work with?