One Less Dwarf
Everything that follows is based on watching Fox between naps and laughing myself silly. They gave me all the pieces then blew the summation. Not that I am surprised. The ability of our media to report the trees and then describe a completely different forest is legendary. Even the vauntedly different Fox is part of the group think.
1. The gang up worked: All the other candidates, the establishment media and the talking heads turned on Dean for the better part of a month. Yes the man is an arrogant ass. Yes his mouth is not ready for prime time. Yes he lacks a Clinton war room to rein the candidate’s mouth in and respond fast to the attacks and gaffes. Yes he comes off as angry which doesn’t sell well beyond the activist base of each party. However if six months ago I had claimed that Dean would finish a respectable 3rd in Iowa, still be in the top three in the national polls and have both the biggest bank account and best fund raising aparat, I’d have been found a padded room. The initial Dean bubble is broken. He is still the man to beat. He has a core 15-20% who will ride with him to the end and possibly follow him out of Boston into a new party. He is not untrainable. Tonight his speech was plastered with American flags. First time he’s shown them like this. Could have passed for a GOP speech with wrapping the flag around the candidate and event.
2. Gephardt essentially suicided out on Dean. He ran the negative ad war against Dean, cutting each down by 10%. Who will be the sacrificial lamb in NH. Logically it should be Lieberman who has effectively zero chance. However Joe may not be willing to do the selfless thing.
3. All NH probably accomplishes is formally finishing off Lieberman who is close to dead anyway. The concept of 3 viable New England candidates when combined New England is down to 22 House seats [in other words less population than Florida or than the two Carolinas combined] was always absurd. Joe had name recognition and essentially nothing else. He is playing the stubborn fool. Pride? Spite? One can only speculate.
4. Edwards is not as strong as his showing. Kuchinich openly threw his followers to him. Under the table so did Gephardt. Under the caucus rules if your candidate doesn’t hit 15% in your precinct caucus you either go to someone who does or get listed as undecided. Holding together a coalition of Kuchinich’s people [the hard lefties who think Dean is too mainstream] and Gepbardt’s [blue collar FDR trade union populists] is probably not something that can be replicated in a primary state where there is no second round of voting.
5. Follow the money. Iowa was essentially a referendum on Dean. 80% of the state said no. They did not specifically pick Kerry or Edwards. Those were merely the two ways to say no to Dean. Dean got hit badly by the gang up. Dean’s bandwagon effect was stopped, his bubble punctured. However there is no special enthusiasm for Kerry v Clark v Edwards. If it were a one on one there is enough establishment $ to make a race against Dean. However through at least NH and SC I highly doubt any of these three will be forced out. That means all three sets of fund raisers plus the zombie Lieberman are essentially dialing for dollars on the same list. Whichever one can score major dollars fast matters more than whichever one places in which order in NH. Presume the top three places in NH are Kerry, Dean, Clark. Doesn’t matter which order. Clark can even be fourth if it is close. Forget which order the top three finish or the size of the victory. They all have enough money to get to South Carolina. Odds are Kerry punts there so you will have Clark, Edwards and Dean competing for 2 of the top 3 spots [Sharpton looks set to get the 3rd]. Edwards probably cannot stay alive if he isn’t in the money in BOTH SC and NH. Clark needs both. However mere survival doesn’t work if the money doesn’t flow. Because the part of the schedule that is retail politics ends after SC. Too many states each week. Too far apart geographically. We are back to airport rallies to get on the evening news and media buys. Dollars. It is rare that the candidate with the most money in the bank by year end of the off year doesn’t get the nomination. It could happen this year. Normally the guy with the money is a basically likeable mainstream politician. Dean is neither. He is the Democratic equivalent of Forbes, Keyes, Bauer, Robertson – the beloved of the activists. It looked for a month that he had expanded beyond that. Instead we are back to the attritional warfare that appeared likely last autumn.
6. Do not discount the idea that the gang up could cause a walk out. A gang up that basically covers the entire national media and ideologically runs from Kuchinich to Gephardt could provide the impetus for the US finally getting a left party nationally. Not a prediction yet. It is a LONG way to Boston. However Howard is an angry man. So are his core. Could be fun.
posted by scott 8:23 PM