Scott: The war of attrition marches onward.
1. Kerry won a few little states [ND, DE]. AZ and NM are showing a lot closer.
2. Missouri Kerry essentially got by default. No one ran a campaign there until Gephardt dropped out after Iowa at which time no one had a time to run a campaign there.
3. Kerry has no core of support. The polls show he is the front runner because he is the front runner. The mass of the Democratic electorate while fervently anti-Bush is not particularly excited by any of the candidates.
4. So Kerry has won IA, NH, ND, DE, MO, AZ, NM. Dean was won DC. Clark seems to have squeaked out OK. Edwards won a favorite son victory in SC. Under 10% of the US population has voted and some 12% of the delegates have been chosen. Kerry has well less than half of those. War of attrition. A big win in any big state changes everything.
5. Lieberman finally accepted what was obvious the end of last year. The dead man allowed himself to be buried. This helps Kerry and Clark most as they competed most directly with him for Wall Street money. The Senator from Citibank can go back to being the shill for Wall Street he normally is. The Democrats now all sound like some version of Dean-Wellstone-Nader. The ideological issue has been settled. Rove and Karen Hughes should be kissing the Deaniacs. If they cannot beat a Massachusetts liberal with a more liberal voting record than Ted Kennedy who has turned into his old Lt Gov to Dukakis self they deserve to lose.
6. This does not mean they won’t lose, merely that they have been handed a weak candidate with a long record to pick apart and a major pander bear problem with his statements in 2004. The man is charisma minus.
7. To quote Billy Blowjob, it’s the economy stupid. No jobs. No raises. Ever rising deductibles on health insurance. State tax increases in 45+ states. Property taxes going through the roof. Edwards is hanging on because the 3 million fewer jobs issue resonates with a major portion of the US electorate. Bush is the 1st President since Hoover to have his own figures show millions fewer working. Yes I know the statistical problems. Yes I know employment is a lagging indicator. Nobody cares. The mess of 1980 was not wholly Carter’s fault nor was the boom of 1964 LBJ’s but pocketbook issues resonate. I know folks in many walks of life and states from my varied activities through the years. Forget the official stats – no one sees a boom in terms of their personal finances. There is a core antiglobalization vote. If the pander bear minority ‘sensitivities’ didn’t keep Edwards from going nativist on immigration he could sweep.
8. Iraq and Afghanistan just isn’t stirring even the Democratic electorate. Part of it is that they all ape Dean on foreign policy. Everyone left is against Iraq and against Afghanistan as it is being done. Everyone is against Pentagon contracts with Halliburton. The Democrats are back to their traditional position of being against an activist DC overseas. How this will play in a general election remains to be seen.
9. Clark and Edwards did just well enough to stay alive. Forget that if OK and SC are seriously in play in November then we are talking an LBJ 1964 type landslide. They can point to states as big as Iowa and twice the size of NH. Taking the night as a whole they did just well enough to keep enough money and media coming to keep them ‘viable’. It is easier to see Edwards surviving longer than Clark. He is a MUCH smoother campaigner. He is everybody’s 2nd or 3rd choice. Except for a few people like me who viscerally hate tort lawyers he is FAR more personable. He also has a financial base in the tort bar that isn’t competing for the same Wall Street $ as Bush, Kerry and Clark. Edwards can survive more respectable 2nd’s and 3rd’s. Clark lucked out in OK. He needs a win a week to avoid being the next Lieberman
10. Dean did not suicide out. Spending nothing and campaigning almost nowhere he will even get a few delegates out of NM tonight. He per se needs the fewest dollars per week to stay alive. However the Deaniacs have to keep coming up with some money or he risks going into personal debt over this. I doubt his wife would be happy having to sell her practice to pay his campaign debts. He has a virtually zero chance of winning UNLESS he can stay alive until Clark and Edwards drop out and then have op research from the media explode a bomb out of Kerry’s past before he locks up the nomination. Remember that Kerry’s support has zero depth. Let him stumble badly and the floating angst will anoint another front runner. We’ve had two in the last two months.
11. Kuchinich and Sharpton aren’t even bit players at this point. All they can do is hog stage time at cattle call debates. The problem is the color of Sharpton’s skin. He’s now been rejected by the bulk of the black voters in three states with large black populations [SC,OK,MO]. However that is different than a gang of rich white men throwing the only black man off the stage. What little media play he got was based on his promise of a real showing in SC. It didn’t happen. Media will ignore him. Party may not be able to. The 800 pound gorilla problem. The Democrats simply cannot win if any major part of their black electorate gets disgusted enough with their treatment to stay home. However including Sharpton means including Kuchinich. And a stage with 6 candidates makes them all look like the two true dwarves.
12. Bush is very vulnerable on immigration. However the Democratic proposals are for a faster more sweeping amnesty which will be even more unpopular once the public as opposed to the activists figure out what the dwarves are saying. The Democrats are prisoners of multiculturalism and the Hispanic ethnic lobbies. This is unpopular even with core Democratic groups like blacks.
13. Bush is also vulnerable on the deficit, especially with his own base. The problem is that there is nothing other than tax cuts for the few percent at the top, corporate tax breaks, missile defense and Iraq that the Democrats want to spend less on. There is an endless list where they want to spend more. By the time they get done pandering in Boston this August they will make the most profligate President since LBJ look like a fiscal conservative. So why are they doing this? Because part of the traditional Democratic litany is to promise ‘more’. It works in the primaries where you can keep mentioning worthy things Bush underfunded. It fails come autumn when the media do due diligence and add up the promises. Bush has the same problem but he is positioning himself to ask for a nominal 1% increase in domestic spending. Congress will spend more. Democrats will fight every bill in the Senate saying it isn’t enough. One of the reasons it is so hard to elect a Senator surfaces here. Kerry will have to vote on appropriations over and over this year. He will have to take public positions on the votes he skips. It will make weaseling virtually impossible.
14. Recall the table I posted on lidlesseye – Kerry and Edwards are as much products of the insider big money machine as our glorious shrub. Media are just starting to focus on this. Big story was the Dean implosion, the Kerry surge and Edwards as the new potential challenger. However if we go a week or two without anything changing beyond Clark getting forced out the media will start doing due diligence. Fox, WSJ, Drudge will all showcase real facts on Kerry’s financial base, statements, voting record. NYT won’t pick up a lot of it but AP will. Enough will get out there. Such fun.
posted by scott 9:04 PM