Scott: Twas the night before New Hampshire and the talking heads were babbling. And missing virtually every point.
1. Dean seems to have stopped the hemoraging but the Dean Express has been derailed. A Dean that doesn’t come to the convention with a comfortable 51-52% of the delegates to allow for the money boys buying a few out from under him is simply not going to be nominated. And Dean knows it. So this is a kamikaze run that is either the biggest ego trip in history or the prelude to a party split. And I doubt Dean himself knows which. The parallel is Hitler after Stalingrad and Tunis. Both had insane runs of luck and then made a mess of their own making. The choice for both was to settle for less than they could have had earlier but that means coming to terms with what their hubris cost them. Hitler was no longer in a position to go for the win and would have had to settle for the tie. Dean could still dictate the party platform and essentially pick the nominee but has to accept it won’t be him. Interesting psycho drama, fortunately for much smaller stakes than Europe 1943-45.
2. Lieberman should take a hard look in the mirror and ask himself what he is doing. The man has real choices. He could bolt the Democrats, take over Reform and create a real center party in the US. Reform has a nice name and zero idea of where it is on the political spectrum. Lieberman would have to accept Perot’s anti-NAFTA line but the Perot-Bush feud means they could probably fudge that one with Lieberman saying I support the party platform but stand on my record type of weasel words. He was already to the right of the party in 2003 and Dean has pulled the entire discourse to the left [the ghost of Lee Atwater must be laughing himself sick; I’ll have to see if I can get introduced to the guy if he in fact did go to Hell]. However that look in the mirror would show him that he has zero chance of the nomination. He’s a dead man as far as his party is concerned. All he does staying in the race is suck oxygen, face time, votes and money from the anti-Dean block. So if he’s staying in the party, the wise thing to do is admit he will never be nominated and run as a favorite son in a few selected states and districts so that if the convention does deadlock he can get a speech and a chance to pull them off the leftward lurch. And he should put it just that coldly. They are committing suicide and here is why and he doesn’t care how unpopular it all is to the minority of activists who are the only ones paying attention yet.
3. The entire rest of the field all sounds like Dean. Clark is actually running to Dean’s left. If Dean were truly an issue candidate instead of an ego maniac he’s be laughing himself silly now. What they had to do to beat him commits them to making this year’s race a left populist campaign that lives or dies on two propositions. First that the mass who don’t vote are really left populists and second that running such a campaign will overcome apathy and fear of jury duty. I so love experiments.
4. Those voters who are in the game are animated by the process but not by any of the candidates in particular. Dean has the only loyal following. Kuchinich and Sharpton probably have as many hardcore supporters as any of the others. That is why the polls can fluctuate so erratically. Once you get past Dean’s hard core and the 1-2% who really like each of the others the remaining 75-80% is making a daily judegment of who sounded cool, who looks like a winner, who got face time on the tube last night. They are essentially all saying the same things. They pander almost identically to every interest group they meet. This is not Bush –McCain where there were real differences ideologically, economically and socially. Allowing for different speech and stage styles these guys could do each other’s canned speeches. Watch one of the debates and once you get beyond stupid flubs there is zero difference between them. Dean is a wild man on stage. Edwards plays the poor boy populist. Kerry plays the Kennedy liberal. Clark is the Roman general turned statesman. Think fast, who is the richest of them and who the poorest. Note that the difference is what order of magnitude of millions. What you have is a complete rejection of the Clinton years not because of corruption, scandals, and a completely inept administration but a return to Kennedy-Mondale-Dukakis programmatic liberalism. This is the last hurrah of Boomers still whining that other than Carter they have never been in power. They want the nation they expected when they stole the party in 1972. They want a mix of Sweden in the 70’s and Paris in 1968. And they expect the minority and union base to just follow blindly behind whichever white millionaire wins. LOL. Our patrician shrub can glad hand among real people better than any of them except Edwards and Edwards is playing who he was in HS not the decamillionaire tort attorney he is now.
5. Retail politics ends tomorrow when the polls close in NH. Dean is the only one with the money to run a 48 state campaign [everywhere minus IA and NH]. Even he won’t have the time. Kerry’s people have already leaked that they are essentially writing off SC to chase the bigger delegate total in MO. This means we are talking attritional warfare here. Until each essentially runs out of money they can find some state they can get 10-15% in the following Tuesday. And there are enough local TV stations who will give face time to whoever shows up in state that being ignored by the national press really won’t matter as much as usual. No guarantees but it looks more and more like the convention may matter for the first time since the GOP in 1976.
6. Pay zero attention to the horse race polls showing Kerry winning. At this stage it is Bush up and down. Bulk of the nation isn’t paying attention yet. Bush 41 came out of the conventions 18 points behind Dukakis and buried him. Ignore the horse race. Follow the money. Follow the unemployment rate. Far better indicators.
posted by scott 6:28 PM