No bounce?

As soon as the CNN/Gallup poll was announced after the Democratic Convention, the media very quickly shouted the phrase "no bounce" because there was a poll after the convention showing a Bush lead... The truth of the situation is a little bit more complicated (dare I say nuanced??). A look over at polling report a little over a week after the convention shows that CNN/Gallup is the outlier among the polls, and indeed, the further the polls get from the convention's actual dates the more likely the poll is to show a Kerry lead. Mind you, in general these are small leads. However, they are small leads during a week that has not been good to Kerry in the media. The coverage for his excellent acceptance speech was largely drowned out by the terror alert and then the various controversies over that alert. (I have not written more on it because frankly, I'm too confused at this point to know what to make of it) More recently the clap-trap about the book and ad attacking Kerry's Vietnam service have been making the rounds, and yet, he's doing pretty well.
The White House was VERY smart to try to raise expectations that after the convention, Kerry should have been 15 points ahead of Bush. Of course, this was entirely impossible. Most polls show at most 10% of the population to be undecided, and it doesn't take much observation to realize that those who support one candidate or another are pretty set in that preference. There just isn't enough undecideds to move to a 15% lead unless something huge(r) happens.
What is the point of this? There are a few points.

• Don't listen to the media about these stories. When I figure out a story that is safe to listen to the media on, I will certainly inform the world.
  
• There really does seem to be some kind of time delay to "bounces". How much is still unclear to me, but given that basically nothing else positive has happened for Kerry, his actual bounce is probably due to the convention, and the reaction was clearly delayed. Exactly why this is, I haven't a clue. It definitely was not due to media talking heads disseminating the coverage as is usually the explanation for a delayed bounce effect.
• All of this is very confusing