Iowa - the media misses the point with the horse race stories.
Our media have been fixated since Teddy White's book on the 1960 campaign, http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y01Y4605181Y2579857/qid=1067387958/sr=1-1/103-0297025-7374243, with inside baseball and horse race stories. This means a fixation with day to day tactics such that they often miss the entire picture.
First, pay little attention to media stories that stress past history.
1. The Democrats keep changing the rules
2. The process works differently without an incumbent President so the last applicale case was 1992 which was a different country and a different Democratic Party
Graham admitted the inevitable.
Kuchinich is either on a personal crusade or is running for the Green nomination should Nader not run again. Dean has stolen his ecological niche.
Edwards has staked everything in his idiotic campaign on South Carolina. If he wins there he remains a viable regional candidate for VP. He is already out of the running for President if he was ever in the running.
Sharpton is a Dixie spoiler with Braun as a spoiler to Sharpton. Neither had any money or any noticeable support beyond their race. Sharpton essentially is running to replace Jesse as Mr. Black America with Braun as the black establishment foil to keep Jackson as the nominal chief [and in practice not dilute the authority of the numerous black office holders and civil rights leaders who do not want the spotlight focused on any one face, especially if it isn't theirs].
Dean has managed one of the great early upsets of modern US political history. This is on a Jimmy Carter, Eugene McCarthy, George Wallace, Bill Clinton come out of nowhere. He's effectively #1 at this point in firm voter support and money. Forget the focus on the anti-war message. He has mobilized the angry left and the internet. However his strength is his weakness. He's got the NPR-issue activist-Birkenstock-university libleft vote. He has a financial base that will keep him in all the way, through the net, AND he doesn't need the $ other people do to run as his voters essentially find him through their issues and activism. However to a degree unique in modern US politics they are backing an attitude and set of positions, not the man. If he tacks to the center they will dump him like a shot and bolt to Kuchinich or Nader. Add to this the fact that some 40%of the delegates will be extra [office holders, party officials,attached territories like PR, Guam,etc.] and for Dean to win outright he needs to get 50% out of the remaining 60% or a bit over 80% of the elected delegates. AND THAT AIN"T GONNA HAPPEN.
The establishment superdelegates do not want a suicide ticket that could drag them down come November. They are in the mirror image position of the GOP establishment in 1999. Clinton couldn't run again. Gore was beatable but the odds favored the Democrats based on peace and prosperity. The GOP officeholders and K street went with our glorious shrub not because they were convinced he could win [no one thought even algore could run as bad a campaign as he did] but because Bush could keep it close and this not hurt the rest of the ticket. Democrats have Senate seats up in Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas...These could be blowouts with Dean. Having to run 5% ahead of the national ticket is one thing. Having to run 20% ahead is giving them heart failure.
So the establishment candidates are starting maneuvering to be the anti-Dean. US politics can develop a bandwagon effect. The mass of the voters are paying zero attention to anything besides the daily death in Iraq, unemployment and Christmas. Most of those who will vote in the primaries will just notice a few headlines until the week their state votes. So Lieberman and Clark effectively dropping out of Iowa is not just Iowa tactics. It is giving Gephardt a straight shot at the #1 headline. They will run for 3rd place in New Hampshire, just enough to show they are not dead, giving Kerry a chance to limit the expected Dean victory by having Dean fail to meet the whisper number [recall that LBJ won in NH in 1968 but the media called him the loser because 'McCarthy did BETTER THAN EXPECTED']. Polls show Dean at over 2-1 in NH right now. If it tightens up before election day [probable] the story will be Kerry's last minute charge. Essentially if the establishment folks can keep alive the idea that IA and NH settle nothing they can drive Dean crazy after that. Each week has 6-8 contests. Kerry, Clark, Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards if he survives SC each pick a state or two to focus on each week. Dean either had to give up the frontrunner status or fight them all. He is ahead in $ and hardcore volunteers but a day only has 24 hours [and Dean gets VERY snappish when tired and stressed]. The biggest problem these boyos will have is keeping the money flowing. They each will need a first or second every week to avoid implosion. None of these can run on volunteer energy. People back them because they think they can win - once they look like losers they have to fire staff, pull ads, which push them out completely.
The idea is to get to the convention with no clear nominee. They have to beat Dean without dissing his base or all they will do is repeat 1948,1968 when the establishment squashed the left who then walked out of the convention. Forget Dean the man. If half his delegates walk out of the convention and endorse the Green nominee the Democrats are dead. Forget the presidency. What if they run 'progressive' write-ins against the office holders who sold out the Democratic Party to Wall Street [which is the way it will be pitched]. Everyone hears the endless lament of how Nader cost Gore the White House. No one hears how Perot elected Clinton 1992. Or how Libertarian suicide candidates cost the GOP at least one Senate seat per cycle [and an average of 2 House seats per cycle the last time I did the figures]. Other than one House seat in NM once Greens do not tend to make serious runs in competitive races. A 'rigged' convention could change all that. Dean has to be seen to not win in the spring rather than have the superdelegates, national committee votes and bought oddities steal it. No one is paying attention to the math so it will be the same people who talk about a USSC coup putting Bush in talking up a brokered convention nominating Clark and Edwards as a steal.
And do not forget Bill and Hillary. They have done something almost unique in US history. They picked Terry McAullife as head of the DNC. Normally the old President's pick would be gone after the election. Three years later he's still there running the machinery and keeping the old Clinton money machine alive. If Dean is nominated he picks his own guys. In a brokered convention [especially one that puts Clark whose campaign is a Clinton front organization acing out the internet folks who agitated for Clark's draft] the dynamic duo can trade their support for keeping their people in place till 2008. This could get fun and it is all nothing like the horse race trivia the media feed us each night.
posted by scott 5:27 PM